
Class 

Book ,V? 

Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSH-. 



SERMONS 



SERMONS: 



APOLOGETIC, DOCTRINAL AND 
MISCELLANEOUS. 



Rev. C. R. V AUG HAN, D. D., 

Of the Synod of Virginia. 



1 1 




RICHMOND, VA.: 
The Presbyterian Committee of Publication. 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 

OCT. 2 1902 

Copvriomt ENTOV 

Cl ASS CtyXXo. No. 

COPf B. 







Copyrighted 

BY 

A. L. PHILLIPS, 

Acting Secretary and Treasurer of Publication. 
1902. 



Printed by 

Whittet & Shepperson, 

Richmond, Va. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Uses of Holy Scripture (First Sermon), 9 

" Search the scriptures : for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life : and they are they which testify of me." — John v. 39. 

Uses oe Holy Scripture (Second Sermon), 27 

" Search the scriptures : for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life : and they are they which testify of me." — John v. 39. 

Uses oe Holy Scripture (Third Sermon), 45 

" And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, 
which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through 
faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by 
inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
for correction, for instruction in righteousness : that the man 
of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good 
works." — 2 Timothy iii. 15, 16, 17. 

Uses of Holy Scripture (Fourth Sermon), 61 

" Preach the word ; be instant in season, out of season ; reprove, 
rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine." — 2 Tim- 
othy iv. 2. 

Uses of Holy Scripture (Fifth Sermon), 74 

" Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that 
needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of 
truth." — 2 Timothy ii. 15. 



6 Contents. 

Page. 
Uses of Holy Scripture (Sixth Sermon), 86 

" Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in 

the mystery of Christ." — Ephesians iii. 4. 
" Ye have not his word abiding in you." — John v. 38. 
" Comparing spiritual things with spiritual." — 1 Cor. ii. 13. 



Uses oe Holy Scripture (Seventh Sermon), .... 100 

" And he called the multitude and said unto them, Hear and 
understand." — Matthew xv. 10. 



The Nature oe Sin, 11-i 

" Oh ! do not this abominable thing that I hate." — Jer. xliv. 4. 
" Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sin may be 
blotted out." — Acts iii. 19. 



The Effects of Sin, 123 

" What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now 
ashamed? for the end of those things is death. For the 
wages of sin is death ; but the gift of God is eternal life 
through Jesus Christ our Lord." — Romans vi. 21, 23. 



The Guilt of Sin, 130 

" That every mouth may be stopped and all the world may be- 
come guilty before God." — Romans iii. 19. 



The Penalties of Sin, 140 

" For the wages of sin is death." — Romans vi. 23. 
" Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just 
and good." — Romans vii. 12. 



The Penalties of Sin, . . . ■ . 151 

" Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished." 
Proverbs xi. 21. 



Contents. 7 

Page. 

The Necessity oe Repentance, 162 

" I tell you, Nay : but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise per- 
ish." — Luke xiii. 5. 



Justification, 175 

" Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that 
is in Christ Jesus." — Romans iii. 24. 



Justification by Works, 197 

" Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justi- 
fied in his sight : for by the law is the knowledge of sin." — 
Romans iii. 20. 

" Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without 
the deeds of the law." — Romans iii. 28. 

" Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by 
faith only." — James ii. 24. 



Substitution and Eepresentation, 221 

" But how shall man be just with God?" — Job ix. 2. 

The Function of Faith in Justification, .... 244 

" Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God, 
through our Lord Jesus Christ." — Romans v. 1. 

Miracle (First Sermon), 265 

" God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, 
and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, accord- 
ing to his own will." — Hebrews ii. 4. 

Miracle (Second Sermon), 287 

" God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, 
and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, accord- 
ing to his own will." — Hebrews ii. 4. 



8 Contents. 

Page. 

Miracle (Third Sermon), 306 

" God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, 
and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, accord- 
ing to his own will." — Hebrews ii. 4. 



The Supernatural and the Natural (First Sermon), . 333 

"Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell 
asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning 
of the creation." — 2 Peter iii. 4. 



The Supernatural and the Natural (Second Sermon), 349 

" Having no hope, and without God in the world." — Eph. ii. 12 



USES OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

FIRST SERMON. 

"Search the scriptures : for in them ye think ye have eternal life : 
and they are they which testify of me." — John v. 39. 

rriHE recognition of a Gocl is not merely reached by a 
1 process of reasoning ; it is an intuitive act of the human 
understanding. There is a manifestation of power which 
presses instantly on the perceptions of sense which carries the 
assertion of the power manifested irresistibly to every sound 
intelligence. This mysterious fountain of manifested power, 
intelligence, and moral feeling is not directly apprehended by 
any sense; it is not immediately seen or heard, or felt, any 
more than the maker of a machine is directly seen in the work 
which manifests his workmanship ; yet the intervention of a 
workman is irresistibly perceived in the work of his hands. 
In like manner the existence of a God is so affirmed and 
expressed in the grand structures of the universe that, from 
the most degraded to the most enlightened of the human race, 
his existence is accepted as an axiom. It is never disputed 
except where the intellect has been warped by false theories 
of philosophy or debauched by moral causes which have made 
the grand conception intolerable to the consciousness of guilt. /*" 

That such a being as the maker of the universe should be ' 
able to communicate with the intelligent creature he has 
placed here on the earth by distinct and definite verbal expres- 
sions, if he chooses to do so, has never been seriously ques- 
tioned, except as a mere speculation, until modern clays. It is 
now asserted with the deliberate and earnest purpose of finally 



10 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

excluding the theory of any divine communication from all 
credit or influence in human society. Hitherto, to the strong 
common-sense intuitions of the human race, it did seem so 
absurd to suppose that God should create any creature of any 
kind, and not to be able to reach such creature under the con- 
ditions of his being, that few had the hardihood to dispute a 
proposition very nearly if not wholly self-evident. The old 
scornful reply of the Psalmist to the skeptics of his day 
seemed to be provoked by the reckless assertion, "He that 
formed the eye, shall not he see ; he that formed the ear, shall 
not he hear P In like manner, the inquiry might come back 
upon those advanced lights of modern wisdom, who have 
declared that the universe reveals force, but no origin or seat 
of that force, and those who have discovered and declared that 
the constitution of the human mind presents an invincible 
obstacle to any inspiration from God, and any communication 
of knowledge from him — he that gave man speech, shall he 
not be able to speak with him ? How could he know that it 
was possible to give speech to man unless he knew what speech 
was previous to the grant? The denial of verbal inspiration 
in late years has assumed a variety of forms; but they all 
vanish when brought face to face with the simple fact that 
God can talk — that he is not a dumb being — and that what- 
ever shade of meaning he may choose to impart, he is able 
exactly to express. It is humiliating to have formally to dis- 
cuss such an issue. This power of verbal communication with 
his talking creature does not compel the Creator to any one 
mode of verbal manifestation of himself or his deliverances. 
His declaration guarantees the absolute truth of every state- 
ment; but so far as the method of his communication is 
concerned, it depends upon the purpose immediately in view. 
When he speaks to convey information for the immediate 
guidance of the creature he speaks in plain didactic phrase, 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 11 

but the intentional obscurities of symbol and prophecy de- 
monstrate his sovereignty over the mode and extent of his 
verbal communications. 

So important to man, in his ignorance of the future and 
of the principles of the divine government in its dealings with 
the race as rebels against its laws, is clearness and sufficiency 
of information, that every form of religion which has obtained 
among mankind has provided for some verbal communication 
from God. The temples of the classic paganism uttered their 
oracles in words, and whatever of obscurity was involved in 
their deliverances was due to the ignorance of the managers 
of the scene which needed to be covered up as far as possible. 
The priesthood of old Egypt and Assyria brought the mes- 
sages of the gods in formal phrase. It was needful that the 
communication should be in words ; the inspiration must be 
verbal. There is something inconceivably striking in the con- 
ception : God speaking to man ! Even more striking than all 
the old mystic ravings of the Pythoness on the steep of 
Delphos is the account given in the Old Testament scriptures 
of the mode in which God gave audible utterance to words 
intended for human ears. They speak of it as a a still small 
voice,' 7 low, distinct, sweet-toned, and full of mysterious 
power, before which the human receiver of the message bowed 
with covered head in inconceivable reverence and awe. E"o 
other attitude was apparently possible; surely no other atti- 
tude was becoming. Conceding God to have spoken, no pre- 
sumption could mount higher than to be heedless of his speech. 
Conceding him to have spoken at large — at various times, in 
many forms, in all the accepted methods of expressing earnest- 
ness, solicitude for human attention, and profound appre- 
hension of the importance of what he had to communicate — 
conceding God to have thus spoken, as is conceded in allowing, 
as thousands of utterly indifferent minds do, the scriptures 



12 Uses of Holy Scbipture. 

of the Old and "New Testaments to be the Word of God, the 
presumption and the peril of refusing to obey the command- 
ment of the text — "Search, the scriptures" — cannot be over- 
estimated. The guilt of such an individual contempt is only 
surpassed by the far more presumptuous and deadly guilt 
which attaches to a formal attempt on the part of any church 
or state power to prohibit obedience to the command. Both 
these forms of this presumptuous sin are perpetually com- 
mitted. There is nothing in which the ordinary man of the 
world feels himself endowed with a broader warrant to act as 
he pleases than in the contemptuous neglect of his Bible. 
While the Church of Rome has absolutely prohibited the use 
-of the scriptures by the masses of the people, except to an 
extremely limited extent and under conditions determined by 
her own authority, and has, in addition to this prohibition of 
her own, added the prohibition of government police, wher- 
ever she has been able to secure it for the purpose. Both of 
these forms of resistance to the order of the text are clearly 
in open conflict with the will of Christ plainly expressed. He 
-conimands, "Search the scriptures." The worldling declines 
to obey, the papal body also declines, with many an elaborate 
argument to show the lack of wisdom in the command, and 
both stand convicted of resistance to the law of the King as 
laid down in the words of the text. To expose the guilt of this 
refusal to search the scriptures let us dwell briefly on a few 
plain considerations. 

1. Let us look first to the position and character claimed 
for themselves by the holy scriptures. It is plain that their 
own definition of their own objects, uses and designs must be 
decisive. This is only to say that the God who gave them has 
a right to say what use he will have made of the revelation he 
gives, and who shall use the record of his words. The uses 
to be made of the inspired record are several-fold, and in each 



Uses of Holy Scfiptuee. 13 

use authorized to be made, the importance of so employing 
them is inestimable, and whatever party is warranted to use 
them possesses a right incapable of change or qualification by 
any power on earth. 

The first of these characters ascribed to themselves by the 
sacred writings is their claim to belong to the appointed means 
of grace. God himself is the only Saviour : no power but his 
own is able to do this work. He might, if he had so pleased, 
have accomplished it simply by the direct and exclusive exer- 
tion of his own will and power, without requiring the con- 
current action of any other being, or the employment of any 
concurrent instrumental means. If he chooses to adopt the 
latter scheme, he has the right to prescribe the means or in- 
struments to be used, and to assign whatever function or effect 
he may see fit to each appointed ordinance. He may so con- 
dition the exercise of his own and only efficacious power on the 
instrumental means as that the use of the instrument will 
infallibly carry the employment of the power. Or, he may 
appoint the use of the instrument to be simply concurrent 
with the use of his own power, but as in no way so condition- 
ing his power as to subject it to the will of the human user of 
the means and remove it from his own absolute control. But 
whatever function may be assigned to the appointed ordi- 
nance, the appointment of such ordinance and the positive 
requirement of its use forever settles the question both in 
regard to the ordinance itself and the question as to who is 
to use it. Any interference on the part of any other party, 
either to change an ordinance or to qualify the persons who 
are entitled to employ it, is the presumption and the incon- 
ceivable guilt of interfering with the legislative authority of 
the Almighty God himself. Now the scriptures say of them- 
selves that "these are written that ye might believe that Jesus 
is the Christ the Son of God, and that believing ye might 



14 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

have life through his name." They say that "whatsoever 
things were written aforetime were written for our learning, 
that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might 
have hope." " Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way % 
By taking heed thereto according to thy word." "Sanctify 
them through thy truth ; thy word is truth." "Born not of 
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, even the Word of God, 
which liveth and abideth forever." "The law is a school- 
master to bring us unto Christ." Believers are exhorted to 
"take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." 
These testimonies are clear, positive, and peremptory. Their 
meaning is so plain that it cannot be made plainer. They 
teach that inasmuch as salvation is by faith, and faith must 
be based upon truth, the Word of God, which contains all his 
testimony, is one of the chief est of the means of grace. They 
teach that as faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the 
Word of God, it is at the peril of faith, and consequently at 
the peril of salvation, to refuse the use of the Scriptures. To 
neglect them is to assume the responsibility of neglecting a 
necessary means of life; it is equivalent to self-destruction. 
To prohibit the use of the scriptures to any party or person 
who is entitled, under the grants of the divine law, to use the 
appointed means of grace is equivalent to wilful murder on 
the soul. It is a crime too fearful to be described in terms 
adequate to its guilt to take away even one bare chance of life 
from a drowning man. But who can conceive the criminality 
of taking away from the dying sinner one of the appointed 
means for his salvation ? Such conduct is not only robbery 
of man, but rebellion against God. It is not only to interfere 
with man's right, but to prevent his duty. It is not only to 
diminish his chances of salvation, but it is the awful presump- 
tion of modifying and changing the prescriptions of God 
himself. !N"o words can depict the color of this iniquity. 



Uses or Holy Scriptuke. 15 

The second teaching of the scriptures in relation to them- 
selves is that they are an all-sufficient standard of truth. "To 
the law and the testimony : if they speak not according to this' 
it is because there is no light in them." "They have Moses 
and the prophets : let them hear them. If they hear not Moses 
and the prophets neither would they be persuaded though one 
rose from the dead." All scripture is profitable for doctrine, 
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. 
"Search the scriptures : for they are they which testify of 
me." The appeal of Christ himself, in all his conflicts with 
the rabbis of Israel, was always to the scriptures. "It is writ- 
ten," was his regular formula. This procedure was absurd, 
if the scriptures were unintelligible and not an effective 
standard of truth. The apostles all preached, "reasoning out 
of the scriptures." When the apostles preached in Berea, 
those who heard them there searched the scriptures to see if 
the things told them were true. They brought even the teach- 
ing of the apostles to the test of scripture, and were heartily 
commended for doing it. They were not only praised, but 
rewarded for it; for they were not only pronounced more 
noble than the hearers in other places, but it is said in close 
connection with the account of their study of the Word of 
God, "Therefore many of them believed." The significance 
of all this testimony of the scriptures concerning themselves 
is unmistakable ; it is the voice of God himself declaring that 
his word is an available and authoritative standard of truth, 
gainsay it who will. 

This is the great fundamental principle of Protestant 
Christianity. It is impeached by Papists, Puseyites, Infidels 
and High Churchmen of many a varied degree. In whatever 
shape it may come it is a disparagement of the Word of God 
which carries with it an enormous responsibility. Some dis- 
parage the scriptures, because they would be pleased to see 



1G Uses of Holy Scripture. 

their influence entirely overthrown; these are the infidels and 
free-thinking scientists. The religious classes who are 
engaged in the same effort to discount the value of the written 
word do it because they wish to exalt into a mysterious im- 
portance the function of the visible church, represented in 
the office of the ministry, or rather the office of the priesthood, 
as they delight to call it. The function of an authoritative 
interpreter would greatly enhance the power and dignity of 
the person holding the office. Such a function in the ministry 
would have made the conduct of the Bereans an offence or an 
impertinence instead of a subject of praise and reward. But 
the gratification of clerical ambition was too tempting a snare ; 
and the Christian commonwealth has been disturbed for cen- 
turies by the arrogant claim of an imperious ministry to dic- 
tate the faith of the servants of God. The fundamental basis 
of this arrogant and most dangerous claim is the impeachment 
of the scriptures as a standard of faith. It does not matter 
at all that God has pronounced it sufficient. They assert that 
actual experience has proved it to be incompetent. They as- 
sert that the Bible is unintelligible ; that it is hard to be 
understood ; that men will wrest their teachings to their own 
destruction. Consequently an infallible interpreter is neces- 
sary in order to determine the meaning of scripture. They 
affirm that the scriptures themselves assert their own incom- 
petence, and pronounce themselves hard to be understood. 
They declare the obscurity of scripture is confessed in the 
admitted appointment of teachers to instruct in it. Moreover, 
there can be no such thing as faith except under the official 
decision of a duly authorized expounder. The scriptures 
settle no controversy, but rather multiply divisions. The only 
way to unity of faith is by the absolute submission of the 
intellect and conscience of every individual to the guidance 
of the official interpreter — the ministry of the church ap- 



Uses of Koly -Scripture. 17 

pointed of God to arbitrate and determine the construction 
of the written word. This is the general line of argument 
pursued in this audacious attempt to defeat the legislation of 
God concerning his revealed will, and establish the tyranny 
of the ministry of the kingdom. Eesistance to the Scriptures 
as the appointed standard of faith is necessarily the establish- 
ment of the clergy in supreme dominion over the faith of his 
servants. The whole base and unprincipled endeavor is 
founded upon a series of sophisms unworthy of a rational 
understanding. Let us expose them in a brief detail. 

To the allegation that the Bible is hard to be understood 
it is enough to meet it as a general assertion with a pointed 
denial. It is true of some doctrines of the scriptures, con- 
sidered in themselves ; but the assertion of the doctrine is 
plain enough. Peter said that Paul had taught some things 
hard to be understood; but his teaching of them was clear 
and positive. It is easy to understand that vegetation grows, 
but it is impossible to understand the actual process of its 
growth. It would be a plain sophism to deny the fact of vege- 
table growth, because the mystery of its processes was im- 
penetrable. The doctrines of the Trinity and the Divine 
predestination are plainly taught in the scriptures, but the 
mystery in the things taught is beyond our comprehension. 
Where is the justice or the sense of confounding the two 
things, and making the mystery in the one the same thing 
in the other ? The prophecies of the Scriptures are in some 
cases made intentionally obscure ; types and symbols are also 
involved in a degree of mystery ; but both are penetrable by 
study and knowledge. It is false logic to attribute to any 
whole what is true and only true of some of its parts. It is one 
of the established instances of sophistry to impute to a whole 
what is only true of a part. It is equally a violation of candor 
to construe difficulties which may be met, just as difficulties 



18 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

on any other subject are met — as requiring a supernatural 
and infallible agency to meet them. Difficulties in science 
or literature are solved by repeated study — by collateral 
knowledge — and by the aid of teachers who are not infallible. 
The difficulties of the scriptures, where such difficulties exist, 
are provided for in the same general way, and the provision 
is sufficient. The teaching office of the Christian ministry 
has a rational function, without assuming a supernatural 
qualification, and taking upon themselves a dangerous and 
tyrannical authority to dictate the views of all who seek 
knowledge at their hands. But in point of fact, so far as the 
greater part of the revelation from God is concerned, and all 
the matter necessary to be known — all that is necessary to be 
believed and done in order, not only to the essential thing of 
salvation, but to the refined culture of holy habit in the soul, 
and to its highest degrees — the Word of God is plain and 
clear. Even a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err 
therein. From a child Timothy understood the scriptures, 
being taught, not by an infallible teacher, but by two women, 
his mother and grandmother, who also understood the writings 
of the inspired teachers. In the Old Testament, the priests 
were ordered to assemble the people, men, women, and chil- 
dren, and read to them out of the book of the law. Parents 
were instructed, under the gravest and most weighty respon- 
sibility, to teach the word of the Lord to their child, when they 
sat down, when they rose up, when they walked by the way, 
and when they came into their houses. All this legislation 
implies the judgment of God that his word was not too hard 
for men and women and children to understand and remem- 
ber. The truth is, the objection of all the enemies of the Bible 
is, not that it is too hard to be understood, but too easy to be 
understood ; so inconsistent are many of the cherished views of 
the objectors. The command to use the cup as well as the loaf 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 19 

in the sacrament of the Supper is easy enough to understand : 
the trouble is that it is also easy to understand as condemning 
the theory and the practice of those who refuse the cup to the 
people, and reserve it exclusively for the priesthood. The law 
of God, that a bishop must be the husband of one wife, is 
easy to understand as approving and requiring the marriage, 
and condemning the enforced celibacy of the clergy. The 
command, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image ; 
thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them," is 
easy enough to see condemns and prohibits the worship of 
images. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only 
shalt thou serve" is easy to comprehend as prohibiting the 
worship of the Virgin and the saints. These are samples of 
scripture teaching, and they are so plain that even a child can 
understand them. It is, then, very clear that it is a disin- 
genuous subterfuge to carry over the obscurity which lies 
upon the symbols of prophecy, and the types of the ceremonial 
law, and impute it to the scriptures as a whole, and pronounce 
the whole record unintelligible. 

Moreover, this assertion of the general and hopeless ob- 
scurity of the scriptures is really an outrageous insult to God 
himself. He is the admitted author of scripture. He gave it 
to reveal his will, and teach certain great and important truths 
for the benefit of the human race. To say that he gave a reve- 
lation which could not possibly reveal anything — that his 
communication was hopelessly unintelligible is to insult him. 
It is to accuse him of attempting to do a thing, and making 
a failure. It is to accuse him of folly, in miscalculating his 
own ability — undertaking to build a house without seeing 
whether he had sufficient to finish it. It is to reduce and de- 
stroy his government over his creature, man, because he was 
not able to communicate his will and make known his law to 
him. A doctrine logically involving such consequences as 



20 Uses of Holy Sceiptuee. 

these is not only silly, but blasphemous. It would be supreme 
folly to undertake a revelation under impossible conditions. 
To call such a communication a revelation would be a contra- 
diction in terms. Such a folly is charged upon the only wise 
God by the necessary, logical structure of the doctrine that 
the Word of God is unintelligible to the creatures to whom it 
is sent. 

To the allegation that the incompetence of the record to 
be understood by the masses of mankind is proved by the 
appointment of a ministry of instruction the reply is obvious. 
The relation of the private members of the church, or the 
masses of mankind outside of the church, to the ministry of 
the Word of God is that of a schoolmaster and his scholars — 
not that of a master of subjects, and an authoritative dictator 
of the views which are to be entertained. My right to learn 
mathematics may be perfect; it may be absolutely inde- 
pendent of the dictum of any party whatever ; yet doubtless 
my progress in mathematical science, which I have a right to 
undertake alone and without their aid if I choose, will be 
greatly facilitated by the aid of a good teacher and a good 
text-book. It would be a monstrous logical blunder to con- 
strue such aids to my progress, as implying that I had no 
right to learn the science of number and figure except as a 
gracious grant of my mathematical instructor — no right to 
look into the text-books, except by his permission. A teacher 
has a useful function entirely apart from a claim to dictate as 
an infallible interpreter. The scriptures themselves settle 
the relation of the teaching ministry to the Word of God ; they 
are to "preach, the word" ; they are to reason out of the 
scriptures; they are "the helpers of the faith" of God's 
people, and not "lords over his heritage." 

Yet further, in refutation of this audacious claim of 
priestly power — the grant of the scriptures and the right to 



Uses of Holy Sckiptuke. 21 

use them is a grant to man as such, to man as a sinner needing 
salvation — not exclusively to man as a believer, not exclu- 
sively to the church as an organized body, still less exclusively 
to the ministry as an order in the church. All the means of 
grace are placed in the hands of the church, not to be given or 
withheld from mankind as the church may see fit. She is a 
trustee under fearful obligations to be faithful to her trust, 
not the proprietor and lord of the values in her charge. She 
is bound to carry the gospel and the ordinances to all for 
whom they are designed ; the grant of the offer of pardon and 
the ordinances and means of grace is to the sinners of the 
human race; their right to use them is defined in the terms 
of the grant, and the church has no right either to refuse 
them altogether or to fix any restriction or limitation on the 
use of them, except what is restricted in the charter of the 
grant itself. Some of these means are restricted to the use of 
the believer, and are intended to promote his growth in grace ; 
others are designed for the unconverted, to lead them to faith, 
and give them a place among the children. For the church to 
alter this arrangement, to place any restriction on the use of 
the means designed either for the believer or the unbeliever, 
or to refuse them to any one entitled to receive them is a 
criminal abuse of the highest type of moral iniquity. It is 
positive rebellion against the Almighty King. It is to betray 
her awful trust. It is to reach a robber hand into the treasury 
of grace, and to plunder the lost souls of the human family 
of their divine inheritance. ~No crime of the banded devils 
of the infernal abyss is superior, if equal, to the crime of any 
church which either refuses to fulfil her divine commission 
altogether or seeks to condition the use of the ordinances 
where the divine grant has made no condition, or attempts, 
by illegitimate assumptions of control over the means of grace, 
to establish a tyranny over the poor souls for whom Christ 



22 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

died. That the grant of prayer, the right to attend on the 
preaching of the gospel, and the use of the scriptures was a 
grant to man, as such, and as the lost sinner whom the God of 
all grace was endeavoring to save, is perfectly clear from the 
text and its immediate connections. To whom were the words 
"search the scriptures" addressed, and who were bound by 
the command ? The words were addressed, not to his own 
disciples of any rank or order in the church, but to the Jews — 
to the very enemies of Christ — to the sinners whom he was 
seeking to draw into belief in himself and into salvation 
through him. He was appealing to the various kinds of 
evidence which proved his claims. He appeals, first, to the 
testimony of John the Baptist, then to his own miraculous 
works; then to the voice heard when the Spirit descended 
upon him at Jordan, and concludes by appealing to the scrip- 
tures which they themselves had in their hands. He com- 
mands them to search those records ; he reminds them of their 
own avowed confidence in their sacred books, and directs them 
to seek there for the proof of his claim. The attempt to make 
it appear that this command was directed to his own disciples 
is manifestly futile, for both the preceding and succeeding 
context demonstrates this fact. Concerning those to whom 
this order was addressed, Christ declares, "Ye have not his 
word abiding in you : for whom he sent, him ye believed not ;" 
and again, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have 
life;" certainly these are not the characteristics of his dis- 
ciples. It is equally futile to attempt to abate the force of this 
text, by saying that Christ issued no command in this passage, 
but only stated the fact that the Jews were accustomed to 
search their scriptures. Allowing this to be true, and that 
our Lord did not use the imperative mood in the Greek lan- 
guage, it will make no difference in its bearing on the point at 
issue. If he does not give a command, he does give a complete 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 23 

warrant to use tlie scriptures, and the grant of the warrant 
is still given to man as such, not to his own disciples ; and he 
still testifies that the search of scripture was effective as a 
means of leading to faith in himself. Whether the words of 
the text issue a command or grant a liberty, what party on 
the broad earth has the right either to disobey the command 
or to abolish the warrant given by the Divine Head of the 
church ? The presumption in the one case is scarcely dis- 
tinguishable from the presumption in the other. The guilt in 
both is immeasurable. It is resistlessly clear that the com- 
mand — or the warrant, if you will have it to be such — was 
given to the unbelieving multitudes, and settles the question 
as to whom the granted privilege or the commanded duty of 
reading the holy scriptures was given by Christ himself, the 
Divine Head of the church. Has the human head of the 
church, even allowing that there is a human head of Messiah's 
kingdom — has this subordinate official any right to repeal the 
command, or qualify the warrant of the divine Lord of his 
own house ? Every loyal heart will give an indignant nega- 
tive to such an inquiry. It is resistlessly clear that the grant 
of the scriptures, as well as the grant of prayer, and the grant 
of the right to attend on the preaching of the gospel, is a 
grant to man as a lost sinner, not exclusively to believers — 
still less exclusively to any official order in the church. Conse- 
quently, the asserted right in the church to restrict the use of 
this divine grant, or to fetter it with conditions, or to prevent 
it altogether at her own pleasure, is not only robbery towards 
man, but it is open rebellion against God. It refuses obe- 
dience to positive and plain law, or to permit privilege to be 
used Avhich he has plainly given. The subterfuges of that 
audacious body which assumes the right to control absolutely 
the use of the scriptures are sometimes absolutely puerile. 
A number of years ago, while a pastor in Lynchburg, Va., I 



24 Uses of Holy Sceiptuee. 

heard a prelate of the Roman Church, the late Bishop McGill, 
comment on this text in a public sermon. He said that in 
these words, "Search, the scriptures/ 7 Christ could not refer 
to the New Testament, for it was not yet written. Conse- 
quently, there was no command in these words to search the 
New Testament, He could not refer to the Old Testament, 
because without the New the Old Testament was an incom- 
plete canon of revelation ; and the Saviour was too just and 
good to refer to an incomplete standard. Consequently, there 
was no authoritative command here to search the Old Testa- 
ment. Having thus excluded both books of the scriptures 
which contain them all, I waited eagerly to hear him explain 
what scriptures they might be which our Lord commanded 
to be searched. But no explanation came; he passed on 
without further remark, and showed how audaciously, even 
before an assembly of American people, a Popish priest dared 
to trifle with the intelligence and presume upon the submis- 
sive abnegation of common sense by an American audience. 
He had swept both Testaments out from the grasp of the com- 
mandment of Christ, and thus nullified the command; and 
the only inference left, if his exposition was sound, was that 
John had falsely represented what Christ did say. John says 
that he said, "Search the scriptures ;" the Romanist prelate 
says, he did not say search either the Old or the New Testa- 
ment — in other words, did not say search the scriptures. 
Who is to be believed, the prelate or the apostle ? To say 
nothing of the poorly disguised design to evade the plain issue 
presented in the words of Christ, the logic of the adroit artist 
was surprising. The assertion that the Old Testament was 
disabled by its incompleteness from being a sufficient stan- 
dard, and that Christ would have been unkind and unjust to 
have referred the Jews to it, is at once an absurdity in itself, 
and a slander upon the Saviour. It is certain that our Lord 



Uses of Holy Scripture, 25 

did give either a command or a warrant to search the scrip- 
tures. The only scriptures recognized by the Jews were the 
Old Testament. Christ then did refer inquirers to an incom- 
plete standard, and, according to the reasoning of the prelate, 
did do an unkind and an unjust thing. Such a sweep of his 
logic was fatal. But it was absurd in another direction : it 
assumes that no part of a canon is available to teach the will 
of God until the canon is complete. It may have been formed 
out of detached and partial communications, made at intervals 
for hundreds of years, and each portion of the revelation 
would have remained useless all through the long ages until 
the last communication was made. Such a conclusion — the 
necessary conclusion from the position of the prelatic reasoner 
— is obviously absurd. The command or warrant to read 
inspired writings was a command to read all inspired writ- 
ings, even if some of them should be given after the command 
or warrant were given. A canon may be incomplete in the 
sense that other inspired books were to be added to it subse- 
quently; yet every inspired book then existing is a complete 
witness for the whole truth it contains, and its testimony is 
as complete when first given as it ever can be. It is as good 
a witness at the beginning as at the end. The mere gathering 
of detached inspired writings into one collection, and the 
public endorsement of the whole as a revelation from God 
does not alter the content of any part of the artificial whole 
made by the collection, or add to the inspiration of any of the 
constituent parts. The appeal of our Lord, then, to the Old 
Testament scriptures was perfectly legitimate ; he was nearer 
to truth and justice in referring the Jews to their own sacred 
books for proof of his claims than the artful servant of an 
apostate church in his endeavor to prevent obedience to the 
Lord's command. 

The conclusion from the testimony of the sacred scriptures 



26 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

is irresistible. The right of the whole human race to read 
the Word of God, and to hear his voice speaking directly to 
each individual soul in the very words dictated by the Holy 
Ghost, is an irrefragible and priceless right of the highest 
sanctity ; it is the gift of the divine Redeemer ; and woe be 
unto any party who attempts to nullify the grant, or to affix 
conditions to its use which do not appear in the charter of the 
gift itself. 



USES OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

SECOND SERMON. 

"Search the scriptures : for in them ye think ye have eternal life : 
and they are they which testify of me." — John v. 39. 

IN resuming the discussion of the right of man as such, or 
as a lost sinner needing the redemption of grace, to use 
the Word of God as one of the appointed ordinances, the first 
remark we submit relates to the indelible responsibility of 
man himself in the case. No matter what his decision may be 
in reference to the use of this ordinance, he will stand respon- 
sible for it in his own person. Man is a creature of reason 
and will, and as such he is a responsible being : he can never 
escape from his responsibility. He is responsible for himself 
and not another ; w T e are expressly informed that "every one 
of us shall give account of himself to God." Whether, there- 
fore any man determines to use his right to search the scrip- 
tures, or declines to do it, he is and will remain responsible 
for his decision, whatever it may be. If he decides not to 
obey the command of the Lord Jesus, and not to use the right 
conveyed to him by this command or warrant; if he deter- 
mines to accept, without inquiry or question, the decisions of 
the church, or the views of any particular religious teacher, or 
the conclusions of any other party whatever, he does not 
thereby throw off his personal responsibility. Many are under 
a delusion upon this point ; they are even taught that by thus 
surrendering their spiritual concerns into the hands of the 
church, the whole responsibility is thrown off from them- 
selves, and the church as their factor or representative as- 



28 Uses of Holy Sceipture. 

sumes the whole. This hope is utterly delusive; and this 
traffic in the souls of men is declared by the prophet of the 
apocalyptic vision to be one of the articles of trade in the 
mighty Babylon of the apostasy. The transfer can not be 
made. Responsibility may be shared between two parties 
who are both under law; but it cannot be transferred from 
one to the other. When the church assumes to effect this 
release of the transgressor, and goes security for his ultimate 
deliverance, she assumes a responsibility of her own of the 
most appalling character. But the individual who enters into 
this bargain, and refuses at once to use his own right and to 
obey the command of the Lord Christ, does not abolish his 
own indelible responsibility. The interpretation of law and 
doctrine by the church which he accepts may be the ground of 
his decision, but that decision is his own: his responsibility 
for it is indelible. Upon this basis of indestructible personal 
responsibility, rests the equally inextinguishable personal 
right of free and uncoerced activity in meeting that responsi- 
bility. Since each one is to answer for himself, each one has 
the undeniable right to choose, under the best lights of his 
own judgment, the way in which he is satisfied that he can 
best meet his own liabilities. He has the right to examine 
for himself all that enters into his case — the law which binds 
him and the method by which he may escape from the conse- 
quences of his sin. No party or power under heaven has the 
right to coerce his action, and force their views upon him at 
the expense of his own deliberate convictions. The responsi- 
bility inseparable from the free moral personality of the man 
himself, who is alone to answer for his own liabilities, is, in 
itself alone, a full vindication of every man's right to obey 
the command of Christ, and to search the scriptures. 

The second remark we submit is that this right to the use 
of the Word of God is what is called by the philosophy of 



Uses of Holy Sceiptuke. 29 

morals a perfect right — that is, a right which conveys its 
grants absolutely, and unrestricted by any grant to any other 
party. Other parties may have a similar right, and in the 
same thing : for there is such a thing as common rights. But 
the right of each tenant in common is good against all other 
tenants of the right, as completely as if the right was exclusive 
and not common. This feature in the property confirms the 
inextinguishable personal responsibility of each individual 
holder of the common right, for in the case of every such 
holder the right is under the jurisdiction of moral law. The 
right is to be used in full conformity with the requirements 
of absolute moral right. ~No man is at liberty to abuse the 
right which has been conferred upon him. The right to use 
the means of grace is not a right to abuse them. No man 
may wrest the sacred scriptures, or deal deceitfully with its 
statements, or pervert its teaching, just because they come 
into collision with his own prejudices and prepossessions. 
He is bound to the use of the record in all integrity. He 
must put no constrained meaning on its words, pervert no 
assertion, distort no statement, but in all simplicity accept 
the mind of the Spirit just as he has given it. Thus, and in 
this species only, is the right to use the scriptures restrained ; 
it is restrained by moral law, and by nothing else. Both of 
these conceptions — the grant of a common right, and the 
jurisdiction of moral law over the use of it — are matters of 
high importance. Common rights are, and must continue to 
be, incapable of modification by any qualifying right in any 
other party. The common right to search the scriptures is 
vested in the unconverted sinner, in the believer, in the organ- 
ized church as a whole, and in the ministry as an order in the 
church. All these parties have an equal right to use the 
scriptures ; and as this is a right in common, it settles forever 
that there is conveyed to no party the faintest shadow of a 



30 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

claim to abolish, limit, or condition the right of either of the 
co-possessors of the right. The assertion of the Chnrch of 
Rome, that the right of the laity to the use of the scriptures 
is a grant subject to the grant to the church, is but a new form 
of reasserting a claim already shown to be unfounded. The 
right to the use of each and all the means of grace which have 
been designed to bring sinners to comply with the terms of 
the divine mercy inheres in every sinner to whom the procla- 
mation and the knowledge of the gospel comes ; it is a right 
incapable of restriction, change, or lawful resistance on the 
part of the chnrch, or any other power in earth or out of it. 
The right vested in each party to the common privilege is the 
gift of God, and any claim of superiority in these parties 
touching the common right is an usurpation, and any inter- 
ference of any party with any co-possessor is tyranny. The 
interference of any church or state with the universal fran- 
chise of the whole human race in the use of the holy scrip- 
tures is an abuse exactly parallel with a claim to prevent 
prayer to Almighty God, or to listen to the preaching of the 
gospel. All of these privileges are equally the grant of the 
eternal Father, and are equally beyond the jurisdiction and 
restraint of any power in earth or hell. Any attempt to coerce 
either carries an enormity of guilt which defies the utmost 
resources of human language to express. It is vain to raise 
hue and cry, as the whole papal body do, against the dangers 
of putting the Bible into the hands of the people; God has 
done it, and it is consummate wickedness as well as folly to 
impeach the grant. 

It is objected against this free use of the Bible, that an 
interpretation by private individual judgment is incapable 
of giving any assurance of truth — that there is no standard 
for authenticating any interpretation of the record — and, 
therefore, that this private construction cannot give any 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 31 

assured faith in any such interpretation of any passage of 
Holy Writ. That is to say, when I look into the record, and 
see that our Lord is repeatedly called God, and from this 
testimony I infer and accept the divinity of Christ, I can 
never be certain that he is a divine being. But if a priest 
tells me that it is so, if he assures me that such is the meaning 
of scripture when it calls him God, then I can be certain of it. 
In the one case, it is only my opinion, in the other it is an act 
of faith. The conclusions are identically the same — the very 
same truth is presented and accepted in both ; yet they are 
pronounced so much unlike as to justify the profound dis- 
crimination which raises one into the dignity of religion, and 
depresses the other into a mere expression of human weakness. 
It is obvious that if any difference is to be made, the more 
dignified term is due to the acceptance of the truth simply 
on God's say so — not to the acceptance which makes the divine 
assertion wait upon a human endorsement before any accept- 
ance is allowable. The simple truth is, that as faith is simply 
believing a thing to be true, faith waits upon that which shows 
it to be true — that is, upon evidence ; and if the evidence 
reveals a thing to be true, there needs no additional testimony 
to ensure the truth. If the truth is revealed by any means 
whatever besides the endorsement of a human interpreter, it 
is as truly believed, and with as much dignity of faith, as if it 
had been certified by every pope in the calendar. If the 
evidence shows it to be true, to believe it requires no additional 
repeat by human lips to warrant faith. A human teacher 
may aid in developing the evidence, and thus be serviceable 
in disclosing the truth; but when the truth is revealed in 
advance of the testimony of the teacher, his testimony is 
superfluous. But a blind claim on the part of the teacher to 
determine by authority, independent of evidence, is not only 
an impertinence, but can really breed no faith because it 



32 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

shows no evidence but its own arbitrary dictum. Such a 
decision may secure a dull, mindless acquiescence which has 
no intellectual value, and no moral quality except a quality 
deserving censure; it can breed no real and approvable 
faith. The only use of an interpreter is to display the evi- 
dence ; he is a teacher, not a judge determining by authority ; 
and if the evidence comes sufficient in force to reveal the 
truth without the interpreter, the interpreter is superfluous 
in certifying the truth. Finally, if the truth needs endorse- 
ment, or if the endorsement is a necessary part of the 
evidence, it does not appear why the endorsement of the 
Almighty God is not sufficient of itself, and why it must wait 
upon the imprimatur of a human interpreter before it is 
entitled to credit. If God is unable to make himself under- 
stood, then an interpreter is necessary; but when God com- 
mands, " Search the scriptures," and go "to the law and the 
testimony," it is clear there is no need for an authoritative 
interpreter to adjudicate and authoritatively announce his 
meaning. 

Moreover, the assertion that there is no standard by which 
any interpretation by a mere private judgment can be authen- 
ticated, is entirely without foundation. There is a standard 
of authentication to which every interpreter is compelled to 
resort. Whether the interpreter be a private judgment or the 
official of a church, the standard of interpretation is the same 
for both, and is as good for one as the other. The standard 
for authenticating any interpretation of scripture, no matter 
by whom made, is, and can only be, the scripture itself ; and 
to demand a standard outside of scripture to determine the 
teaching of scripture is obviously absurd. If one would know 
what Shakespeare taught, he must examine what Shakespeare 
said. To go to some outside publication — to some author who 
had nothing to do with the expression of Shakespeare's views 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 33 

— would be absurd. For such an author to assume the right to 
settle, by his own authority, w T hat Shakespeare taught, and to 
prohibit all reference to Shakespeare's writings would write 
himself down as Dogberry desired himself to be. ~No matter 
w T ho the interpreter may be, an individual or a church — his 
object being to settle and certify the meaning of scripture — 
he is compelled to refer the decision to scripture itself. We 
must, therefore, take the ground that the inspired records are 
intelligible ; for it would be ridiculous to refer the question as 
to their teaching to themselves if they were not intelligible. 
But if they are intelligible at all, they are intelligible to all 
for whom they w T ere intended; and as they were appointed 
to be a means of grace to all who are entitled to believe in the 
Saviour of the w r orld, the conclusion is resistless that they are 
intelligible to the race generally, and not merely to a certain 
official class. On the contrary, if they are not intelligible to 
the general mind, how can the church either authenticate its 
interpretations, or make them intelligible to the commonalty ? 
The church is not merely to understand the record itself, but 
to authenticate her view 7 s to the masses of mankind. How 
can she do this, if the records are either kept from the people, 
or are unintelligible to them ? How can they rely on the con- 
struction the church puts upon the record ? Without imput- 
ing anything sinister to the church, how can they know that 
her views of w T hat the records say are correct, when the masses 
cannot understand the record ? They are compelled logically 
to take the word of the interpreting church, and that only. But 
the church fails to authenticate her interpretations when she 
decides merely by authority. How can she authenticate to 
another party her views of a record unintelligible to them? 
Unless the church is inspired to give a new revelation, which 
would discredit the old one, and logically introduce an absurd 
endless regressus, it has, on the theory that the scriptures are 



34 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

unintelligible, become impossible for the church to make an 
unintelligible record understood of the people, and thus is 
utterly disabled from authenticating her interpretations. It 
is manifest that the record must be intelligible, or no construc- 
tions of it can be authenticated as certain. It must be intelli- 
gible to the common people, or no authentication to them is 
possible ; they must accept blindly the dictum of the church. 
But if the record is intelligible to those to whom they were 
given as a means of grace, the only possible standard of 
authenticating any construction of its contents must be the 
record itself. No dictum outside of itself can possibly do it. 
Disputes touching the teaching of any author must be referred 
to the author himself. If the standard of authenticating the 
scripture be in itself, and the scripture is intelligible in its 
deliverances, the standard is as available to one party as 
another ; it is as available to a private understanding as to a 
church official. Like other records, it will yield more to an 
understanding coming to its investigation with greater gifts 
or better facilities ; but it will yield something to every 
inquirer, even to a child like Timothy. It will yield more to 
the better qualified, and this explains how it is that it may 
and sometimes has happened that a single mind may secure 
better results in the study of the scriptures than a whole 
synod of inferior minds. In such a case as this, the superior 
weight would justly be with the private personal judgment, 
and not with the court or council of the church. The idea 
that a dictum of the church is needful to determine the 
meaning of scripture is absurd; the church must refer its 
own construction back to the record in order to rest assured 
that they are agreeable to the record. 

Moreover, there are certain laws fixed in the nature and 
usage of human words which are operative even in ordinary 
human minds unconsciously to themselves — operative in cul- 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 35 

tivated minds consciously, and sometimes learnedly appre- 
hended of themselves, which guard against fanciful and 
extravagant constructions, and compel a construction gov- 
erned by the obvious intent of the record itself. For example, 
figurative expressions are not to be taken literally, nor natural 
impossibilities construed as possible; and these restrictions 
on construction are as fully recognized by the common as by 
the cultivated intellect. When Christ calls himself a door, 
both classes of intellect understand what he meant without 
any difficulty. To these rules the private judgment and the 
church, even the "infallible church/' must alike submit; and 
under the guidance of these rules, when honestly followed, the 
constructions of either will be equally entitled to respect. But 
if the private judgment conforms to these rules, and the 
"infallible church" does not, the construction of the private 
judgment is entitled to the greater regard. Under these rules, 
there is no more difficulty in believing, and no more dignity of 
faith in receiving, like Timothy, the instructions of a grand- 
mother than in accepting the decisions of the whole calendar 
of popes. Truth is truth, and not only worthy of credit, but 
obligatory upon faith, no matter what evidence reveals it. 

But still objections are urged with persistent energy 
against the holy scriptures as the rule of faith, although 
God himself has endorsed it in many forms as both efficient 
and sufficient. We shall, therefore, confront these objections 
with the counter objections to the Romanist rule of faith. 
The Protestant Christian rule of faith is the Word of God 
alone, interpreted by each seeker of its instructions under the 
guidance of the usual fixed laws of the construction of human 
words, and with the aid of that indwelling grace which he is 
entitled, under the provisions of the covenant of grace, to seek 
and to expect in the discharge of all his duties, and in all the 
emergencies of his life and career as a servant of God. On the 



36 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

other hand, the Roman Catholic rule of faith, instead of this 
simple and easily available standard of the holy scriptures of 
the Old and ~New Testament, is so vast and complicated that 
it may be fearlessly asserted that probably not one single 
bishop, priest, or pope in all the long ages of the history of the 
papal body has ever read the whole of it. The rule comprises 
several distinct divisions, each of which, except the Bible, 
comprises vast numbers of documents and volumes, many of 
them of great size, the perusal of which would be a task be- 
yond the rational energy of any one man. It first specifies, as 
a part of the rule, the holy scriptures ; but not the scriptures 
as held by the Jews of ancient times, and recognized by the 
general scholarship of modern times ; for, in addition to the 
old canonical books of the Jews, which make up what is known 
as the Old Testament, they have added several books never 
recognized by the Jews as belonging to their sacred inspired 
writings. The Bible of the papal body is disfigured and dis- 
honored by the addition of whole books which have no claim 
to inspiration, and stood to the Old Testament, in the hands 
of the Jews, just as Baxter's Saint's Best, or the Pilgrim's 
Progress stand to the Bible as Protestant Christians now re- 
ceive it, The books of the Apocrypha, added to the Bible by 
the Roman Catholic Church, have no right to be there ; and 
in placing them there that church has corrupted the standard 
of the inspired writings, and fixed upon herself the curse 
threatened, in the close of the Revelation of St. John, upon 
any who should add to the Word of God. So that the part of 
the papal rule which is the least objectionable — the holy 
scriptures — is so corrupted by unauthorized additions that its 
authority is seriously impaired. But to the Bible the papal 
rule adds "the sense of Holy Mother Church" — that is, the 
construction placed upon the Word of God by the general con- 
sensus of the church dispersed through the nations and 



Uses of Holy Sceiptuee. 37 

through the ages. To discover what this consensus teaches 
is a task which no man can accomplish. To this is added the 
rescripts, bulls, and decrees of the popes, numbering more 
than two hundred and fifty pontiffs, and extending through 
centuries of time. This enforces on the inquirer at the oracle 
of the Roman rule of faith, the examination of a mass of docu- 
ments which makes his task ridiculous. To this is added the 
decrees of the councils, which are numerous, and the decrees 
of which give the inquirer another unmanageable mass of 
documents of enormous magnitude. To this is added the huge 
volumes of the canon law. To this is added the vast folios of 
the fathers, and to all these is added the distinct and final 
constituent of the rule found in the apostolical and ecclesias- 
tical traditions. The rule prescribes that the unanimous con- 
sent of all these vast and varied testimonies is necessary to 
the establishment of an article of faith ; and until he comes 
into possession of this unanimous endorsement of a given 
truth, the inquirer is not at liberty to believe it. The object 
of all this vast complication of impossible testimonies is to 
drive the inquirer to the authority of the priesthood, and 
make him willing to receive whatever they tell him to be the 
truth. To complete this tyranny over the faith of the people, 
within the last thirty years, this rule, while nominally it 
remains unchanged, has been so qualified that it may be con- 
sidered as greatly simplified, improved, and made practically 
efficient. After a conflict of centuries in its own bosom over 
the locality of the composer of controversies — in our own 
day — the disputed seat of the infallibility, long claimed for 
the papal body, has been discovered and definitely settled. 
The Vatican Council of 1870 determined the long-disputed 
question, and decided that the infallibility of the church was 
located in the pope alone, who is now fully authorized to settle 
all questions of faith and morals. It is no longer necessary 



38 Uses of Holy Sceiptuee. 

to consult Bible, or the records of councils, or the discussions 
of fathers, or the decisions of dead popes. The Holy Ghost 
speaks through the Holy Father, and the matter is settled* 
any appeal to any other source of knowledge has become both 
cumbersome and needless. Just as the Almighty God would 
do, if he were now reigning visibly on earth before his an- 
cients gloriously, the Vicar of God has only to issue a note, 
and all doubt vanishes forever. 

It is objected to the Protestant rule that it logically imposes 
an impossibility on the Protestant inquirer before he can have 
any rule of faith at all. He must be able to authenticate the 
whole history and make-up of the canon of scripture before 
he can be sure that he is coming to a source of any real in- 
spired information. He must be able to trace the origin and 
history of every book of the Bible, repel all doubts, suspicions, 
and questionable inquiries about each constituent treatise in 
the sacred volume, and be able to vindicate by a triumphant 
argument the right of each one of these treatises to a place in 
the canon of scripture. Otherwise, he may be receiving, as 
the lessons of Almighty God, the deliverances of some un- 
known, merely human teacher. To all this elaborate foolish- 
ness it is only necessarj^ to reply that it is imposing a test 
which is not applied to any similar case in any branch of 
human affairs — a test which would be scouted as unadul- 
terated nonsense if applied in any similar case* Must the 
purchaser of a copy of Shakespeare be able to prove all the 
history of the plays and poems of the great master before he 
can be rationally sure he is buying the works of the poet and 
not the works of some one else ? Must every citizen of this 
country be thoroughly posted in the documentary history of 
the constitution of the United States before he can rationally 
receive that instrument as indeed the fundamental law of this 
land ? Must every student of law be able to trace back to its 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 39 

origin in the English Parliament every law in Coke upon 
Littleton, or in Blackstone's Commentaries, in order to be 
sure when he consults those celebrated books that he is becom- 
ing acquainted with the laws of England — before he can be 
sure he is not being imposed upon by a false statement touch- 
ing the laws of that great empire? Assuredly not; on the 
contrary, the demand for any such preliminary information, 
in order to the rational acceptance of the constitution of this 
country or the laws of England, would be scouted as utterly 
irrational. In like manner the plain unlettered Christian may 
rely upon his Bible as he relies upon the constitution of his 
country, or the acknowledged writings of a celebrated writer. 
It is mere perversity to say that he cannot rationally rely on 
the universal and undisputed acceptance of such works as we 
have cited for illustration as an all-sufficient foundation for 
his personal acceptance of them. This is specially true of the 
Bible, for that sacred book has been subjected to the most 
drastic tests that any book in the history of the world has ever 
been subjected to, and has held its high place through a 
greater number of centuries, and with a more intelligent 
endorsement, than any other book. What is there irrational 
in the acceptance of such a book by the masses of the plain 
people of the race ? Forgeries of such books are impracti- 
cable ; and if a code of laws for England could be made, the 
obedience of the English people to those laws could not pos- 
sibly be forged ; and the credit of such a deception could not 
live for a day under the light of such a fact. The world is 
not easily deceived in relation to such matters, and where 
large bodies of men have been deceived, it is either because 
the compulsion of the sword has been used, or the doctrine 
taught has given license to passions which are delighted with 
a religious excuse for indulgence. On the contrary, the holy 
scriptures have borne high their banner over fields of strife 



40 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

manned with every weapon of intelligence and learning, and 
bristling with the arms of governments and armies, and won 
its way by the irresistible might of truth and righteousness. 
On such grounds, it is entirely rational, in the plain, unlet- 
tered Christian, to trust in his Bible, though not posted in 
the history of its criticism, manuscripts and authentic sources. 
Behind him stands an all-sufficient mass of the noblest schol- 
arship to support and vindicate his confidence. 

Besides, the difficulty is equally formidable in its applica- 
tion to the opposing papal theory of the rule of faith. It will 
be just as difficult for a plain, unlettered man to authenticate 
the church as to authenticate the scriptures. He is told an 
infallible church will preserve him from all error. But how 
shall he satisfy himself that she is infallible, and what church 
is infallible? The Roman Catholic Church claims infalli- 
bility; the Greek Catholic Church also claims it; the newly 
developed English Catholic Church also claims it. Each of 
these churches charges the other with error in some form. 
How is a plain man to decide which is right, or whether all 
of them may not be wrong ? Is he to take the mere word of 
any one of them ? If not, how is he to decide 1 If he 
does not take the word of any of them, how is he to prove her 
infallible character, or demonstrate her infallible guidance 
against error ? This will be found fully as difficult for the 
plain, unlettered man as to prove all the history and criticism 
of the Bible. Waiving all questions touching the unanimity 
of popes, councils, and fathers, who are about as unanimous 
as the voices of Babel, and taking the latest, improved, sim- 
plified, and easy-running modification of the infallibility 
scheme, the inspiration of the pope to guide into all truth: 
how can a plain man prove that claim of the Roman pontiff \ 
There is not a word said about it in scripture. Peter was 
inspired, but not a word is said about his being the bishop of 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 41 

Rome ; not a word about the descent of his inspiration to his 
successors in that office. He was an apostle, not a diocesan 
bishop ; he had, as an apostle, a roving commission, without 
a limitation of territory, while every diocesan bishop had a 
territory strictly defined. The promise to guide the church 
by the Holy Ghost is not confined to any one office in the 
church, even if it is admitted that the organized visible church 
is referred to in that promise. The sure pledge of the Holy 
Spirit is to the invisible church, composed only of regenerate 
believers — not to the visible church, which is composed of 
only professed believers and their baptized children. This 
inference is compelled by the fact that every branch of the 
visible church has been more or less infected with error, and 
not one of them so deeply as the Roman Catholic Church, 
while the promise has been fulfilled to every member of the 
invisible church, not one of whom has ever perished, or failed 
to be guided into salvation. To claim infallibility for the 
visible church, and especially to claim it exclusively for one 
functionary alone in the church, has not an inch of standing 
ground in the scriptures, or in the history of the church since 
the days of the apostles. The records of the eighteen hundred 
years since the death of John, the last survivor of the apostles, 
has shown everywhere in the actual career of the visible 
church that the pledge of the Holy Ghost was not designed to 
preserve the visible church from the least infection of error. 
Vast sections of it have been permitted to wander far from 
the great essentials of the gospel; other vast sections of it 
have been permitted to abandon much that was valuable to the 
symmetry of the gospel system, while retaining the essentials 
necessary to salvation ; but even the purest have no reason to 
claim absolute exemption from error of every kind and degree. 
How, then, can the plain, unlettered man prove the infalli- 
bility of any part of the visible church ? The infallibility of 



42 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

the .Roman Church must be proved before it can be admitted ; 
how can the plain man prove it ? Even if he could have 
access to the voluminous records in which the facts are to be 
found he could not prove it by the unanimous consent of 
popes, councils, and fathers ; for wide and uncompromising 
differences have prevailed among them upon a multitude of 
points. Popes have differed from popes, councils from coun- 
ciles, and fathers from fathers. The idea of their unanimity 
is utterly false. Take, for instance, the question of the seat 
of infallibility. Some have contended that it was found in 
the pope alone, others that it was found in the councils alone, 
others that it was only to be found in a council acting in 
concert with pope ; but differences have abounded between 
every one of these sources of authority, arranged according 
to each of these plans of organization. The Vatican Council 
of 1870, under the call and sanction of Pius IX., finally 
settled it in the pope. But who can say whether this council 
giving it to the pope, or more than one council in past times 
denying it to him was right ? The possibility of infallible 
guidance in the visible church has been seriously questioned 
in the Roman Church itself: who can decide it? It may 
cut away a host of embarrassments to say that we cannot tell 
whether this council granting it, or that council denying it 
to the pope was right; but, inasmuch as it was of great im- 
portance to have the question settled some way, we have 
resolved to accept the decision of the Vatican Council, and 
abide by it. Woe to him who thus audaciously throws off his 
obligation to earnest and impartial investigation, and sur- 
renders his immortal soul to the guidance of a party whom 
he does not know, but simply resolves to consider to be 
incapable of misguiding him. 

To authenticate the papal rule of faith, whether under 
its former or its more recent modification, is subject to the 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 43 

same difficulty alleged to be applicable to the Protestant Eule. 
In this respect they stand on an equal footing, and the 
Romanist who urges it is guilty of false reasoning. But, in 
point of fact, the objection has no rational application to 
either. It is not necessary that the unlettered papist should 
be able to trace out the claims of his church before he can 
rationally recognize its existence ; nor has the unlettered 
Protestant to vindicate the history and criticism of his Bible 
before he can rationally accept it as the inspired rule of 
faith. The difficulty is the same to both, and injurious to 
neither. The one may rationally accept his church, and the 
other may rationally accept his Bible, although neither may 
be able to vindicate his confidence by the impossible mode 
of argument dictated by the Romanist controversialist to 
discount the Protestant rule of faith. 

Finally, for the present discussion, it is objected that the 
Bible is an incompetent rule because it settles no contro- 
versies, and only multiplies divisions of sentiment. It is 
sufficient to remark that this is equally true of the Romanist 
rule: infallibility in the Roman Church has never been 
more effective in preventing divisions of sentiment than the 
Protestant rule. The causes why no rule has ever been able 
to prevent differences of opinion will be investigated here- 
after, and they will be found as effective against one rule as 
another. It is certain that the Romanist rule has never 
prevented these divisions. There were divisions in the bosom 
of the church on this very matter of the seat of infallibility ; 
divisions on many other matters — divisions between councils, 
popes, and fathers ; divisions among the sects in the church — 
between Jesuits and Jansenists, Dominicans and Francis- 
cans ; divisions as wide and even more virulent in hostility 
than between any Protestant sects. Some of these divisions 
endured for centuries, and were never subdued by the infal- 



44 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

lible power in the church, which sometimes had to appeal to 
the power of the state to do what it could not do itself. Is it 
said that this was owing to the unsettled question as to where 
the infallibility was seated? The crushing reply is, that 
when found by the Vatican Council in 1870, the announce- 
ment of it was at once followed by a new division — by the 
retirement of the old Catholic party — an event which showed 
the powerlessness of the new dogma to control the variety of 
opinion in the mental constitution of human nature. It was 
a drastic test ; it showed that no infallible standard, or source 
of authorized decision, whether in the infallible Word of Grod 
or in an infallible church, has ever been able to produce 
absolute unity of sentiment. The apostles, though confessedly 
inspired, could not secure it in their day. This long and 
uniform experience yields a proof positive that the difficulty, 
the source of division and difference, does not lie in the stan- 
dard, whatever it may be, but in something else. The diffi- 
culty is grounded in the constitution of man. There is, 
therefore, no impeachment of the standard when unity of 
view is not secured. 



USES OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

THIRD SERMON. 

"And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which 
are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ 
Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for 
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 
that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good 
works." — 2 Timothy iii. 15, 16, 17. 

WE closed our last lesson in the study of the rule of 
faith by bringing to notice the unquestionable fact 
that no standard, however perfect or infallible in itself, had 
ever secured absolute unity of sentiment. The apostles 
never did it, although they were living, inspired, and authori- 
tative men. The scriptures never have done it when they 
were admitted to be the rule of faith. The alleged infalli- 
bility of the church, whether exercised by the pope alone, or 
by a council alone, or by a pope and a council acting in con- 
cert, have never done it, even in the very church over which 
they bore rule. It is a fundamental part of the papal theory, 
not only that there must be an inspiration to construe the 
written record, but that this inspiration must be exercised by 
living persons in order to be effective. The apostles were 
living persons, inspired of the Holy Ghost, and no inspiration 
could be higher or better supported than theirs, yet divisions 
of sentiment and violent controversies existed in their day 
which they endeavored to quell and never completely subdued. 
Experience in the widest and most diversified extent has 
shown clearly that no standard, however perfect in itself, or 
logically complete in its adaptation to secure unity of senti- 



4G Uses of Holy Scripture. 

ment, has ever been able to secure it in fact. This curious, 
but unquestionable fact plainly proves that the cause of this 
phenomenon is not in the standard, but in something outside 
of it altogether; and consequently there is no reflection cast 
upon the standard by the failure to secure unity. It also de- 
termines that any effort to relieve the situation is logically 
misdirected when addressed to the improvement of the stan- 
dard. To charge the Protestant rule of faith with an essen- 
tial defect, because it cannot suppress divisions of sentiment, 
is wholly illogical. The same defect applies to an infallible 
church, or an infallible pope, and if it proves the standard 
defective in the one case, it equally does it in the other. The 
truth is, the effect does not impeach it in either, for the 
simple reason that it is not referable to the standard at all. 
The cause or causes lie outside of all standards, and are found 
in more than one thing, but chiefly in the existing constitution 
of the human understanding and will, as they have been 
affected by the inward results of moral evil. The boasted 
rule of the papal body has failed as thoroughly as any other 
to control these causes, and has over and over again demon- 
strated the intrinsic weakness of her rule to meet the case 
by calling in the aid of the civil power to enforce a unity 
which existed only in appearance, and which she confessed 
by this appeal to military coercion that she could not secure 
in any other way. The true cause lies outside of every form 
in which a rule of faith has ever been conceived. To a brief 
consideration of the principal cause let us turn for a few 
moments. 

1. A difference of view of the same object, existing in two 
or more persons, may be ascribed to more than one cause : it 
may be due to the difference in the point of view, or to a 
difference in the emotional states of the mental view, or to a 
difference in the light or evidence thrown upon the object, 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 47 

or to a difference in the condition of the organs of vision, or 
to a difference in the medium through which the object is 
seen, or to a difference in the associations of idea in different 
minds; but the chief causes, which, indeed, may include 
some of the others mentioned, are differences either in the 
light in which the object is seen, or in the condition of the 
organs of vision by which it is seen. In the first of these 
causes, a change or an improvement in the light may be neces- 
sary; in the other, a change or improvement in the organ of 
vision. If the light is perfect and the same to each of the 
inquirers, it is manifest that there is no ground for impeach- 
ing the light as the cause of the difference. In this case, to 
seek a change in the light is at once illogical and superfluous. 
This is precisely the blunder of the papal body in their 
rejection of the scriptures alone as the rule of faith. They 
attribute the cause of divided sentiment to the light thrown 
upon the truth by the Word of God, and they seek to substi- 
tute it by another light — the dictum of the pope. But if the 
difficulty is not really in the light, but in the organ of vision, 
or in the medium through which the vision is taken, it is 
manifest that no mere change in the light will reach the cliffi- 
cultv. As I0112; as that radical difference, either in the organs 
of perception or in the medium of vision, just so long will it 
determine a difference of view, no matter whether the light 
is altered or not. A number of persons may be looking at the 
same object through sheets of glass differently colored; they 
must necessarily see it under different coloration. The cause 
of this difference is not in the light, for the same sunshine 
may be pouring over the field of view, but it is in the different 
colors of the mediums of perception through which the parties 
may be looking. To bring all these inspectors to an absolute 
unity of view, it is clearly absurd to dream of changing the 
light on the landscape, or of impeaching its perfection ; the 



48 Uses of Holy Sceipture. 

unity of view can only be achieved by altering the regulating 
colors in the mediums of perception. Or, if the conditions 
of the organs of vision are different — some short-sighted, 
some long-sighted, some color-blind — these organs must be 
brought into uniformity in order to secure unity of view. 
This illustration presents the difference between the papal 
and the Protestant Christian theory of the causes which 
underlie the differences of religious sentiment so widely pre- 
vailing. The one attributes the difficulty to the light, and 
would consequently alter the standard of faith from the Word 
of God to the dictum of the pope, and secure from error by 
providing an influence of the Divine Spirit to protect him 
from error in making his decision. The Protestant Chris- 
tian, following the lead of the scriptures in attributing the 
proneness to error in the human mind to the blindness and 
the corrupting influence of moral evil on the understandings, 
feelings, and affections of individual men, postulates an 
influence of the Divine Spirit to regenerate the heart and 
illumine the understanding, and thus secures the guidance 
into all the truth necessary to salvation. The doctrine of 
personal infallibility in the pope is a misapplied and illogical 
travesty of the doctrine of the new birth taught by our Lord 
to Nicodemus. It provides an influence of the Holy Spirit 
to guide into the truth at a point where the influence of that 
Spirit has already been sufficiently exerted in the inspiration 
of the scriptures, while it ignores the real factor in the 
generation or error — that is, the blinding and distortion of 
faculty by sin in the individual who is to be guided 1 — and 
makes no provision, or none adequate, to meet that part of 
the case in which the stress of the difficulty is to be found. 
It makes a superfluous provision to guard against error where 
it has already been sufficiently guarded against, and little or 
none to meet the real difficulty in the way, and to enable the 
effective use of the sufficient rule already provided. 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 49 

Here, then, we see the reason in chief why differences of 
opinion exist among Christians. They are all equally honest 
in their constructions of the rule of faith ; all true Christians, 
without exception, are led to the acceptance of all the truth 
necessary to their salvation; but, for wise reasons, in the 
counsels of God different measures of indwelling grace leave 
them to different views touching matters not essential to sal- 
vation. As greater effusions of the Holy Spirit are granted 
to the church, its divided parts will draw closer together. 
The day is pledged to come when the watchman will see eye 
to eye ; but that grand triumph of grace and truth will be 
due, not to any communication of the Spirit securing an 
infallible and authoritative determination of truth, ab extra, 
but causing the mental medium of vision in his people to 
approximate closer and closer to uniformity of moral and 
spiritual coloring. The result will be unity of sentiment 
through growth in grace and the increase of holiness in indi- 
vidual souls. This is the only way in which it ever can come. 
Mere infallibility in the standard, without control over indi- 
vidual organs of perception, can never do it. It is, therefore, 
manifest that the objection to the Word of God, as the sole rule 
of faith and practice, drawn from the prevalence of divided 
sentiment among Christians, is really no impeachment of the 
standard at all, because those divisions are due to other causes 
than the incompetence of the standard. The scriptures, ac- 
cording to their own testimony in our text, can be understood 
by a child, and are able to make wise unto salvation; they 
positively assert that they are profitable for doctrine, for cor- 
rection, for reproof, and for instruction in righteousness. 

2. To turn now briefly to the consideration of the com- 
peting theory of the rule of faith. We do not propose to 
discuss it in detail ; we shall take it in its most comprehensive 
form, and, by one or two comprehensive considerations, show 



50 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

the danger and the folly involved in the attempt to set aside 
the rule which God has established. A detailed discussion 
of the papal rule would lead into a view of the alleged consent 
of popes, councils, fathers, canon, law, traditions, and the 
consensus of holy church — a view of such vast compass as to 
make full investigation the work of years, if not absolutely 
impracticable. Yet this view, if it were practicable, is one 
which, by exposing the innumerable differences of opinion 
existing among these separate elements of the papal rule, 
would expose the utter unsoundness of the rule itself. But 
we will take the most general form in which the doctrine is 
expressed — a form including all these specific elements of the 
rule virtually, and giving voice to what is supposed to be 
involved in them all. This general form of expressing the 
idea is that, in order to secure unity of sentiment, there must 
be a seat of power competent to give authoritative definitions 
and determinations of doctrine and law. From such an 
authoritative decision there can be no appeal. What is settled 
by authority must be accepted as final. In order to convey 
this authority, it is claimed that the seat of the determining 
power must be infallible. Just as a judge must be placed 
to interpret the laws of the state, just so there must be a 
personal arbiter of religious law; and to give due force to 
his interpretations, the arbiter must be made incapable of 
error. As already stated, this supreme and infallible author- 
ity was supposed to be in the church ; but for centuries the 
locality of this infallible authority was strenuously disputed. 
The dispute was settled in 1870, and the seat of infallible 
authority was determined to exist in the pope alone. The 
doctrine now is that the pope is empowered to settle definitely 
and forever every question of doctrine or duty for the whole 
human race, and in every relation of human life. There is 
no appeal from his decision, and no resistance to his author- 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 51 

ity. To dispute his dogma or refuse to accept it is heresy, 
and rebellion against the authority of God himself. There 
is no liberty of opinion — no freedom of action — when the 
pope has spoken. In all matters whatever covered by his 
official declarations, there remains the one course of absolute 
obedience, under all the penalties, temporal or spiritual, 
which, by the ordination of God, support his authority. He 
is to the human race all that God could be, if he should 
condescend to arbitrate human controversies on matters of 
morals and religion. He is a sort of vice-God: he openly 
claims to be the Vicar of Christ, with authority over the whole 
habitable earth. Claims like these — so vast, mysterious, 
illimitable — assuredly ought to be able to show irresistible 
grounds upon which they rest. The will of God, in this awful 
delegation of his divine power, ought to be so clearly manifest 
as to leave no room for the shadow of a doubt. 

The first objection to this remarkable theory is that it 
discounts, to a minimum, the value of the revelation which 
God has made, and discredits its principal utility as settled 
by itself. The theory implies that the revelation of God, 
given in writing, is powerless to teach and determine any 
truth. The whole value of the written revelation is condi- 
tioned on the use of a distinct inspiration from that in itself. 
But the scriptures declare that they are able to make wise 
unto salvation — that they are profitable for reproof, for cor- 
rection, and for instruction in righteousness ; that even a 
child like Timothy could understand them; that even pious 
women like Eunice and Lois could soundly instruct in them. 
Such facts are utterly inconsistent with the papal theory, that 
an infallible and authoritative interpreter is necessary. A 
position which logically implies the utter inability of the 
infinite God so to express himself as to be understood by those 
whom he addressed, is a blasphemous absurdity. 



52 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

Another objection to this astonishing theory is that it places 
the teaching office of the ministry in a false relation to the 
written Word. The commission of the ministry of the gospel 
is. "Go teach all nations.' 7 It is, then, perfectly plain that 
the relation of the ministry to the written scriptures is not 
that of a judge on the bench to the laws of the land, but of a 
teacher to his text-books. The decisions of a judge carry the 
authority of the commonwealth. The instructions of a 
teacher carry the force of evidence and truth only. His 
function is more analogous to the prelections of a professor 
of law than of a judge upon the bench. Even the official 
declarations of the teachers of the church in synod assembled 
are simply a testimony to the truth, not an authoritative de- 
cision; and especially not an authoritative decree carrying 
penalty in its support. The evidence that such is the true 
relation of the Christian ministry to the scriptures is found 
in two decisive circumstances : First, in the positive language 
of their commission, and, second, in the manner in which the 
inspired apostles interpreted and carried it out in their public 
work. They "reasoned out of the scriptures' 7 ; they appealed 
to them as evidence; they "preached the Word. 77 The Son 
of God himself did the same thing : his constant formula was,. 
"It is written 77 — "thus saith the law and the prophets. 77 The 
scriptures were not only made the basis of instruction in the 
teaching of our Lord and the apostles, but they directed the 
people to whom they preached to search the scriptures for 
themselves as tests of their doctrine. In all matters already 
settled and embraced in the scriptures then written, they 
avoided dealing authoritatively, and appealed to the record. 
Touching all new truth not yet recorded, they did speak with 
authority, whether in modifying the old law or in the ap- 
pointment of new ordinances ; but both to Christ himself and 
to his inspired apostles the scriptures were a standard at once 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 53 

intelligible and authoritative, both for themselves as teachers 
and for the people they instructed. Their commission, and 
the commission of all who took orders under them, was, 
"Preach the Word." It is a perpetual truth, then, of the 
Christian system that the function of the Christian ministry 
is that of a teacher, not the function of a priest or a judge; 
and until the function of a teacher is confounded with the 
function of a judge, and a commission to testify is identical 
with an authority to decree, it will remain impossible to claim 
the right of an authoritative interpretation of holy scripture 
for any human agency of the visible church, whether it be 
pope or bishop, or council in synod assembled. It is a bold 
perversion of a plainly defined function to alter the relation 
of the ministry to the scriptures, from that of a teacher, 
empowered to reason out of the record, to the function of an 
interpreter, with an exclusive authority to decide. 

A still farther objection to the papal theory is, that this 
vicious alteration of the relation of the ministry to the scrip- 
tures involves a most dangerous assumption in the ministry 
of power to condition the means of grace. It affirms that the 
utility of the scriptures is conditioned on the manipulation 
and authoritative construction of the clergy: with it, the 
Word of God is valuable; without it, worthless — nay, dan- 
gerous. Now, the scriptures are one of the means of grace, 
appointed by God to be employed in seeking his favor ; but 
if they are dependent on clerical use for all their efficacy and 
usefulness, their utility is not in themselves, but is suspended 
upon clerical function, and, in the last analysis, upon clerical 
will. That involves the reduction of salvation to dependence 
upon clerical will. God has nowhere given such fearful 
power — such a tremendous and subtle instrument of domi- 
nation over his creatures — into the hands of his ministers. 
He has reserved that awful prerogative and power in his own 



54 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

bands; he lias said pointedly, "Salvation is of the Lord;' 7 
"of him are ye in Christ Jesus." If the clergy have the 
right to condition one of the means of grace, they have an 
equal right to condition all of them. They have as much 
right to condition prayer, or praise, or attendance on public 
preaching, or the sacraments, and to suspend their efficacy 
and good effects on clerical function, and consequently on 
clerical will. In other terms, this papal rule of faith logically 
involves the supremacy of clerical will over the whole series 
of the means of grace, and consequently over all the ends for 
which this series was appointed, including the absolute mat- 
ter of personal salvation. It not only presumes to reverse 
the legislation of God in determining the position of the 
scriptures as a means of grace, but implies an equal power 
over the whole series, and still more dreadful, through this 
assumption of the right to condition the means, assumes 
control of the very issue of personal salvation. 

Yet further, it is a legitimate and powerful objection to 
this claim to interpret authoritatively, that it necessarily 
defeats its own end, and renders any certain assurance of 
revealed truth absolutely impossible. Making its dangerous 
assumptions, with the avowed purpose of making the belief 
of the truth revealed from heaven absolutely sure, and claim- 
ing the power to do that very thing, the rule necessarily so 
works from its own logical nature as to make that very thing 
utterly impossible. Destroying all capacity in the Word of 
Gocl to make its own declarations intelligible, and disabling 
the average human understanding from comprehending what 
the record states, the rule forever precludes the common mind 
from the possibility of discovering what God has said. To 
ascertain whether two things agree, both must be understood, 
at least so far as to judge whether they agree or disagree. 
The comparison cannot be made if one is understood, and the 
other is altogether unintelligible. The papal rule is intelli- 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 55 

gible so far as what the pope says is concerned, but whether 
what he says is coincident with what the scriptures say has be- 
come impossible, because it is insistently asserted that the 
common mind cannot understand what the scriptures do say. 
The papal rule has forever destroyed the possibility of deter- 
mining whether God and the pope say the same thing. No 
one can ever be certain of what God has really taught. No 
one can ever tell whether the pope has rightly rendered the 
Word of God or not. Whoever submits his understanding to 
this rule receives his religion from the pope, but not from 
God, for the revelation from him has been disabled, and the 
positive articles of the faith received are from the pope alone. 
The devout and loyal Catholic who receives the dicta of the 
church as the truth of God can be certain that he is in posses- 
sion of what the church tells him is the truth, but it is im- 
possible that he can ever be certain that it is the truth which 
God has revealed. His rule of faith disables God from being 
understood, and no comparison between what he has said 
with what the church says he has said is possible. The very 
thing which they charge upon the Protestant Christian rule 
of faith is the very thing which applies with tenfold more 
force to their own. No man who pledges himself to take the 
representations of another man, as to the views of a third 
party, can ever be rationally sure that he is in possession of 
the views reported, w T hen the views of that third party are 
admitted to be unintelligible. 

Still another objection to this papal rule of faith — an ob- 
jection which comes down to men's bosoms, and the business 
of the present life — is that it involves an absolute supremacy 
of the infallible power over the whole scene of human affairs 
in the present life, as w T ell as over the affairs of the world to 
come. It brings every relation and interest of human life 
under control. It is so wide and exorbitant in its reach that 
there is literally not one thing, not one relation or human 



56 Uses of Holy Sceiptube. 

interest, not even one word, or thought, or feeling, or act of 
the human soul, which is not logically brought under the 
control of the infallible power, and the will which directs 
the use of it. The only limit upon it is the limit of priestly 
ability to put it into practical operation. The law of God 
extends literally over the whole sphere of human action or 
accountability ; every possible thing to which the distinction 
of right or wrong can attach is under its jurisdiction; and 
the right to determine what the law of God requires, is the 
right to regulate and determine everything covered by the 
law. Let it be remembered that the papal claim is the claim 
to decide authoritatively all matters of religious or moral 
obligation. It is a claim, not only to define the truth, but to 
determine the law ; not only to say what is true to be believed, 
but what is obligatory to be done. It is a claim to define 
what is moral, as well as what is religious. Now, inasmuch 
as moral law extends over the entire field of human energy — ■ 
inasmuch as whatever man can do, or think, or say can be 
done, or thought, or said in a right or wrong way, inasmuch 
as the moral distinction can attach to every relation, energy, 
and interest of human life, to family and social, national and 
scientific interests and relations — it follows, by irresistible 
necessity of the laws of thought, that the unrestricted right 
to determine that distinction carries with it the right to de- 
termine all things to which that distinction belongs. This 
is the principle by which all the enormous assumptions of 
papal power to interfere with civil governments, educational, 
and scientific interests, social, family, and individual con- 
cerns have been based. As governments can do right or 
wrong, the papal rule of faith warrants the papal power to 
intervene and determine what the course and policy of civil 
governments should be. As family affairs can be conducted 
in a right or wrong way, the papal rule warrants interference 
with family affairs. As all human interests admit and neces- 



Uses of Holy Sceiptuee. 57 

sarily involve the moral distinction, all may be controlled by 
the infallible power, and whatever human will is found ad- 
ministering it. As the conduct of human individuals is 
under the regulation of moral law, all human individual 
conduct is brought under the domination of this vast prin- 
ciple, and of the human hands in which it lodges power to 
administer and enforce it. It develops a scene of concen- 
trated power which has no parallel in human history, and 
before which the thoughtful mind stands appalled ! If all 
the laws of all the nations on all the earth were determinable 
by a single intellect and a single will, it would be such a 
tyranny as the world never yet has seen. The terrible domi- 
nation of Tamerlane or Ghengis would be the mildness of a 
summer shower to the rage of a tornado compared with it. 
If all the laws of physical nature in water, air, earth, and 
fire, the laws of germination, the laws of health, were all 
determinable by a single intellect and a single will in a 
human frame, it would be a still more fearful power. It 
would involve life and death and unspeakable suffering to 
all things living on the planet, in subjection to the will of 
one man. But either or both of these fancied accumulations 
of power would be tolerable compared with moral law, hold- 
ing, as it does, in its grasp all the interests, the purity, peace, 
and well-being of the entire race of immortal creatures for 
all time and all eternity, determinable by a single human in- 
tellect and a single human will. Xo human interest can be 
safe under the legitimate operation of such a principle as the 
papal rule of faith — the authoritative determination of relig- 
ious truth and moral law by an infallible human authority 
so-called. The personal character of the prophets and apos- 
tles reveals to us a rational committal of a true inspiration 
to them. The enormous prevalence of abandoned wickedness 
in many of the occupants of the infallible chair is fatally 
suggestive of a false inspiration. In these days of decayed 



58 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

affections towards true and sin-restraining religion, there is 
a fatal ignorance, indifference, and false estimation of the 
real character of the principles of the Romanist system. The 
fair character and orderly deportment of individuals who 
hold these principles obscure the enormity of these principles 
themselves. But principles are to be judged by their con- 
tents and necessary logical implications, and not merely by 
the character of their adherents who may be under restraints 
entirely separate from their admitted creed. If there is any 
suggestion of future practical action in the principles which 
lay down the law and prescribe the conduct of men, no warn- 
ing is more transcendently important than that which signals 
beforehand the unspeakable danger which is coiled up in the 
doctrine of a right to determine authoritatively the teaching 
of the Christian religion and the obligations of the moral law. 
This open Bible, with each soul free to use it as one of the 
appointed means of grace, and to inquire for the law of the 
Lord at his own mouth, and under full responsibility to him 
and to him only, is the foundation stone of all that is precious 
to mankind in this life and in the life to come. It conditions 
your civil liberties, your religious freedom, and your free 
political institutions. It conditions your sacred households, 
your social privileges, your scientific progress, your educa- 
tional policies, and your intellectual advancement. It equally 
conditions your personal moral development and that of your 
children. It involves the moral principles which regulate the 
commercial and business interests of society. It controls your 
personal development and your personal well-being at a thou- 
sand points. Let the great right of free inquiry into the mind 
of God, with which he has endowed you, be taken away from 
you, by whatever artful ecclesiastical device or political man- 
oeuvre, and the funeral bell of all the fruitful liberties of 
mankind, and of all their prospects for a happy immortality, 
will resound over a world given over to the powers of the 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 59 

abyss. "Search the scriptures," for in them there is eternal 
life to all that is good on earth and blessed in heaven. 

It is the last consummate flower of blundering mischief 
in this papal rule of faith, that while theoretically confined to 
the pope alone, it is, nevertheless, logically and practically 
available only through the clergy in general — through the 
parish ordinary, or diocesan bishop, or some member of the 
hierarchy below the pope. To whom can the individual 
Romanist apply for the settlement of any of his doubts or 
difficulties in moral and religious matters % The pope in per- 
son is not approachable by one in ten thousand of those who 
have taken him for a guide. The only one practically within 
his reach is the priest or bishop of the vicinage, neither of 
whom are allowed by their own theory to be infallible. The 
decisions of the pope himself are often to be made known to 
the individual faithful through the same officials. The de- 
cisions of the pope are most frequently in general terms, 
whose import must be explained by fallible interpreters. 
Who can be assured that any deliverance whatever by these 
fallible intermediaries, whether explanatory of the pope, or 
a decision on their own part, is infallibly correct? If not 
infallibly defined, how can the definition be received as an 
article of faith, or placed in a position of higher dignity than 
a mere Protestant opinion ? Suppose the inquiry brought to 
the parish priest involves the interpretation of a passage of 
scripture ; the pope has not decided it ; the church has never 
sent out a commentary covering the whole extent of the sacred 
writings. The construction must come from the fallible offi- 
cial to whom alone the application for instruction can be 
made. This is, in fact, what is commonly done. The pope 
does not, and the priest of the parish does, as a rule, de- 
termine all questions of doctrine and duty — a person, on their 
own theory, just as fallible as any Protestant teacher can pos- 
sibly be, and who has no more power to raise the decision, 



60 Uses of Holy Sceiptuke. 

when accepted, to the dignity of an act of faith, and above 
the level of a mere personal opinion. Yet, practically, the 
parish priest or the diocesan bishop does wield the infallible 
power; their decisions are generally accepted as final, and 
the inquirer who accepts, as infallible, this decision of a con- 
fessedly fallible interpreter is satisfied that he has exerted an 
act of faith which yields him a measure of merit in the sight 
of God and the church. Hence in many papal countries the 
saying is common, that the only available method of getting 
at the mind of God is through the lips of the priest. This 
caps the climax of the dreadful usurpation. Making high 
claims to furnish an infallible determination of Christian 
truth through the infallible head of the church, when reduced 
to practice, their rule works out the determination of the diffi- 
culties of the faithful, in the overwhelming majority of cases, 
by officials confessedly not infallible. The rule is unwork- 
able; it necessarily involves deceit and falsehood in settling 
the difficulties of seekers for instruction. It pretends to fur- 
nish an infallible rule of faith, and is compelled by the prac- 
tical emergencies of human life to give them a fallible in- 
struction, because only given by fallible instructors. The 
papal rule of faith, even when construed as usable by the pope 
alone, is a claim appalling in its audacious reach over all that 
is dear or valuable to the human heart ; but it is ten thousand 
times more awful when administered by the universal hier- 
archy and priesthood of the church. 

This tremendous mischief in the papal rule drives, with 
accumulated force, to the more profound veneration, to the 
more intense and resolute adherence, and to the more ardent 
employment of that rule which the infinitely wise and gra- 
cious God has given us — even those scriptures which our 
Lord commanded to be searched, even that Word of the living 
God, which is able to make us wise unto salvation, and which 
liveth and abideth forever. 



USES OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

FOURTH SERMON. 

The Relation of the Ministry to the Word. 

"Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, 
rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine." — 2 Timothy iv. 2. 

THE relation of the ministry to the written Word, having 
been shown to be, not that of an authoritative inter- 
preter and judge, but that of a teacher of the law and gospel, 
a series of interesting questions immediately spring up touch- 
ing the true scope and significance of the teaching function 
of the Christian ministry. What are they to teach ? In what 
does the authority of this teaching over conscience consist ? 
In what manner are they to teach in order to secure the best 
effect of their instruction ? What qualifications are suitable 
and necessary to the full quittance of their obligations under 
their commission ? What is the nature, the source, and the 
extent of the legitimate influence of the ministry \ What is 
the magnitude and limitation of their responsibility ? What 
reciprocal duties are due from the people under their instruc- 
tion % To some of these questions at least, we shall aim to 
give brief answers as time and occasion may serve. 

1. The answer to the question touching what the ministry 
are to teach is found summarily, yet comprehensively stated, 
in the first member of the text, "Preach the Word." God 
has been pleased to give a statement in writing of all that 
man need know in order to salvation. He has declared both 
what is to be believed, and what is to be done, to that end. 
The sharp limitation of the phrase, "Preach the Word," is 



62 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

not only positively imperative, bnt negatively prohibitory: 
it not only requires all that is in the Word to be preached, 
but it limits the preaching to the Word, and prohibits the 
preaching of anything but the Word. It is peremptorily 
prohibitive of all tradition outside of the Word, whether it 
be tradition in the church or out of it. It prohibits the 
official presentation of any teachings of fathers or councils 
as authoritative, or in any other form than any other testi- 
mony of any other uninspired writers, as merely confirmatory 
or illustrative of the teaching of the living teacher. Such 
teachings may be used on the same principle upon which 
profane history, legislation, or science, may be used to illus- 
trate and aid in evoking the meaning of the scriptures ; but 
they are utterly prohibited from being 1 allowed any, even 
the least, coordinate authority with the Word of God. They 
utterly prohibit all subjects of secular knowledge, political, 
scientific or literary subjects, from being brought into the 
official teaching of the ministry. These matters can only 
be used to an extent rigidly limited as ancillary, or briefly 
illustrative of the truth set forth in the sacred Word. To 
pervert this purely limited right of incidental use, for the 
mere purpose of making more plain the spiritual truth of the 
sacred books, into a general liberty to handle any kind of 
secular subject in the Christian pulpit, is an unauthorized 
and presumptuous trespass beyond the bounds of the minis- 
terial commission, which is as dangerous as it is wicked. The 
official teaching of the Christian ministry is strictly limited 
to the doctrines and precepts and general contents of the 
written scriptures. 

This limitation, however, leaves the teachers of the gospel 
a field whose dignity and extent is worthy of the highest 
gifts of the human understanding, and whose full legitimate 
boundaries can never be exhaustively reached by any one 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 63 

man, or by any definable number of separate men. The 
ministry is set to preach the whole grand gospel of the divine 
redemption. It is to expound the scriptures, and the whole 
vast record is subject to their commission. These ancient 
writings, containing the earliest of all known history, legisla- 
tion, philosophy, and religious exposition of doctrine and 
moral law — beginning their narrative with the story of crea- 
tion, and the outset of the human race — embracing the only 
knowledge of the facts and religious faiths of the earliest 
ages of human history — written in at least three different 
languages — constitute by far the most important and inter- 
esting of all sources of human knowledge. The exposition 
of these scriptures, the narrative of their facts, the evocation 
of their sublime lessons, the illustration of their metaphors, 
statements, and moral principles, form a single department 
of the ministerial function, by itself calling for high scholar- 
ship and ability to do it even an approximate justice. But 
when the raw material, or virgin ore of the truth, is thus 
hewed out of the rich mine of the record, another grand 
department of the teaching function of the ministry emerges 
to view. It is theirs to work this material into orderly form ; 
to draw T out the logical coherence of the truth into a logical 
system, and to display the grand, orderly proportions of the 
divine philosophy contained in the revelation of God. ~No 
system of either ancient or modern thought — not the stateliest 
and noblest structure of the boldest and broadest of human 
thinkers — can bear comparison with the philosophy of man 
and the universe, contained in the truths touching both, set 
forth in the Word of God. 

It is the function of the ministry, as teachers of the Word, 
not only to interpret the words and develop the theology of 
the scriptures, but to expound the law which the divine 
Word has prescribed, whether it be the law moral or statutory. 



64 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

The things to be done, as well as the things to be believed, 
are contained in the Word. The commission to preach the 
gospel is also a commission to expound the law, for both are 
contained in the Word which they are commanded to preach. 
In the brief, but exhaustively complete, system of the ten 
commandments — in the specific precepts and positive exam- 
ples scattered through the whole record — that law, which is 
to measure obedience or rebellion, and, by consequence, the 
acquittal or condemnation of everv subject of the law, is laid 
down; and the teaching ministry are required to make it 
known to all over whom their jurisdiction extends. This sec- 
tion of the instruction committed to the ministry, considered 
even by itself, gives an aspect of dignity and grandeur to 
the ministerial office, of incomparable force. As correlative 
to this capacity to expound the law, there is another function 
of the minister as a teacher which legitimately involves great 
gifts and great responsibility, and that is the judgment and 
guidance of human thought and ' feeling as affected by the 
law and the grace of the divine Word. ~No office in human 
hands demands a deeper or a more complete knowledge of 
human nature. All of the grand truths of the scriptures lay 
hold upon some passion of the soul, and determine some 
energy of the will. It will excite love or hate, hope or fear. 
It will kindle desire or aversion. It will awaken conscience, 
convict of sin, and determine the will to obedience or resist- 
ance. The casuistry of an awakened and reluctant con- 
science — the objections to this or that form of truth, the artful 
evasions of a heart deceitful above all things, the complica- 
tions of motive in all human action — give room for all the 
knowledge, keenness of discrimination, and resolute fidelity, 
of which the highest of human intellects is capable. The 
knowledge of the human heart, as affected by moral or 
religious truth or error, is a part of the field of instruction 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 65 

allotted to the Christian ministry ; and the gain of this 
knowledge determines the necessity of personal intercourse 
with the people in every regular pastoral charge. To all the 
various forms of truth which the Word of God contains and 
asserts, related errors are opposed, as various in form as they 
are presumptuous in their spirit. All these varied and subtle 
forms of error are within the province of the Christian 
teacher. He must understand, in order to refute them; he 
must refute them, in order to defend the truth. 

But this is not all. The Christian minister is not a mere 
teacher : he is a teacher; hut he is something more, or rather, 
his business as a teacher is to be done in more than one way. 
He is not a mere teacher, in the sense that his work is done 
when he makes known the bare fact of any truth, no matter 
whether of the law or gospel of God. He is a teacher under 
the modification of a preacher : he proclaims as he instructs ; 
he teaches in his proclamation. He is a herald, a messenger, 
an ambassador, and a witness ; and all these functions are 
discharged by making known or teaching the will of the King. 
He testifies by open outcry, and makes known the will and 
word of the Lord under this form of public address in order 
to reach as many of those to whom he is sent as he can possibly 
do every time his message is delivered. He is set, by argu- 
ment and persuasion, not only to let the truth be known, but 
to urge it upon the acceptance and obedience of his hearers, 
as well as upon their intelligence. He is to exhort and per- 
suade, as well as instruct. Hence he must have more than 
the mere natural or intellectual knowledge of the truth in 
order to discharge his function fully. He must be able to 
feel, as well as see the truth. He must be able to conceive 
the weight and power of the truth, as well as know it. It is 
not necessary that a teacher of astronomy should have the 
broad imaginative faculty, or the deep sensibility, by which 



66 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

to conceive approximately the enormous size and distances 
of the planets, in order to teach those facts, although such 
powers would unquestionably add greatly to the interest and 
effectiveness of his instructions. But the Christian teacher, 
in dealing with such topics as the love of God, the grace of 
an atoning Saviour, the beauty of goodness, the excellence 
of the divine justice, and the worth of the soul, even the 
plainest man in the office must have some open sense of the 
truth which he is dealing with, and be able to handle them 
with some sensibility to the tenderness, or terror, or grandeur, 
or persuasiveness, which is inherent in these topics. How 
else can he expect to rouse the human soul to suitable action 
in reference to them ? The power of the imaginative faculty, 
and all the affections of the heart, are as important to the 
perfect discharge of the function of a teacher of the Word of 
God, as is the mere knowledge of the truth revealed, or the 
power of rightly dividing or discriminating its boundaries 
and connections. 

The preaching of the Word, the teaching and proclamation 
of the whole counsel of God, involves, as the subject-matter 
of the teaching function of the ministerial office, all the grand 
departments of law, doctrine, and fact contained in the revela- 
tion of God. The Christian teacher is to explain, defend, 
and enforce, by the utmost compulsion which there is in the 
powers of convincing and persuasive influence, all that God 
has seen fit to make known for the salvation of mankind. 
He is to explain and uphold the sanctity of divine law and 
the divine authority; he is to expose and rebuke the sins of 
men by pointing out their discrepancy with the law, and their 
violence to the authority of Almighty God. He is to open 
the great plan of redeeming love, and urge men to embrace 
its terms. He is to remonstrate with their delays and refusals 
to obey. He is to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 67 

and the day of vengeance of our God. He is to display fully 
the rewards of faith and obedience, and the perils of disobedi- 
ence and unbelief. All this is embraced in the "preaching 
of the Word." This broad and powerful programme of truth 
is the substance of what he is to teach. 

2. The manner in which he is to teach, inasmuch as it 
strongly qualifies the success of his teaching and the welfare 
of those whom he teaches, is another point of profound interest 
and concern. He has no commission to "lord it over the faith 
of God's people." He is the "helper of their faith," not the 
dictator of their creed. Their right and duty to examine the 
written oracles of God, and, like the Bereans of old, to test 
the conformity of his teaching to the standard of faith, is as 
perfect, complete, and unalterable as those growing out of his 
commission. He is their teacher, not their judge or dictator ; 
and his teaching is not only to be conformed to the record, 
and to be governed by the rational laws of interpretation, 
but to be accommodated in its simplicity, or in its higher 
qualities, to the peculiar states and necessities of their minds. 
He is to take the meaning of the record according to the 
established sense of the words used. He is to compare scrip- 
ture with scripture. He is to preserve the logical order and 
consistency of the truth itself, and to observe and preserve 
the proportions of the faith. He is, by prayer, by knowledge, 
and by incessant study, to show himself to be a workman 
that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word 
of truth. By this method he is to gather the materials for 
his instructions ; and when ready to expound his gathered 
treasure, the apostle has laid down the rules which are to 
guide the actual communication of his message. 

In the first place, he is to instruct always with a deep and 
honest conviction of the truth which he inculcates. He is 
to "hold fast the faithful Word, that he may be able both to 



68 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

exhort and convince the gainsayers." Nothing will more 
paralyze the energy and convincing force of the truth than 
unsettled convictions of the soundness and reality of the truth 
on the part of the public teacher. He must be, definitely,, 
either for or against Christ and his teaching. One grand 
cause why so much religious instruction falls without effect, 
is the honest, but feeble, convictions of those who teach it. 
The grandest element of success in the boldest and most suc- 
cessful preachers of the gospel has always been in the force 
and sublime energy of their own convictions. They must 
speak as dying men to dying men. The subtle force of deep 
convictions gives a point, a power, and a reality to their 
testimony which propagates a like conviction. Men are far 
more insensible to the real force and meaning of religious 
ideas than sceptical of their reality. Men do not doubt the 
reality of death, sin, accountability, and the penal power of 
violated law, as much as they fail to realize them. The pre- 
sentation of these, and all the rest of the grand truths of the 
sacred scriptures, invigorated into a due sense of reality by 
the force of powerful personal convictions on the part of the 
preacher, will break through that stupor of insensibility, and 
let in the truth upon the mind in something of its natural 
force. "Cry aloud and spare not," was the command of the 
Lord to one of the old prophets. Nothing can take the place 
of deep and passionate earnestness in presenting the truths 
of the holy scriptures ; and nothing will breed genuine earn- 
estness but deep convictions of the truth, and confidence in 
him who has affirmed it. Custom, habit, a mere conviction of 
the judgment that earnestness is necessary, may result in 
vociferation and incoherent exhortations ; but it will be vain 
to expect this false enthusiasm and semblance of strong 
feeling to produce the effect of a true sensibility and a keen 
conviction of the truth proclaimed. Habit and the force of 



Uses of Holy Sckiptuke. 69 

an established custom in the manner of delivering the instruc- 
tions of the pulpit, however sincerely they may be complied 
with, can never take the place of strong real convictions. A 
painted fire, no matter how skilfully delineated, will never 
burn. 

In the second place, he must teach in the spirit of a teacher, 
not in the spirit of a gladiator. "The servant of the Lord 
must not strive, but be gentle unto all men." The truths of 
religion, in part at least, fall with stern effect on the guilty 
conscience and the perverted affect ions of men. The charge 
of guilt, and the warning of danger, even when felt to be true, 
rouse the resistance of the heart. It is the worst of policies 
to attempt to win a man by fighting with him. To tell him 
of his sin and his danger with a spirit of genuine compassion, 
and a keen anxiety for him to escape, will lay hold upon his 
feelings. In all the regular instructions of God's house, the 
minister of the Word must "in meekness instruct those who 
oppose themselves." As he seeks to win or lead men to repent- 
ance, it is indispensable to show forth sin; but he must at 
the same time show the spirit of kindness and tender solicitude 
that the sinner should escape to the refuge set before him in 
the gospel. The utmost fidelity to the truth, which awakens 
and convicts of need for deliverance, is entirely compatible 
with the most unfeigned love and sympathy for the person 
of the sinner; and when this love is manifestly the ruling 
aim and spirit of the effort, it has every likelihood of final 
success. Patience is an essential quality in any teacher, but 
especially in a teacher of the gospel. !Not only meekness in 
dealing with the passions and prejudices of men, but patience 
in dealing with their ignorance and inaptness to learn, is of 
the first importance to the teacher of the Word. Line must 
be given upon line, and precept upon precept; here a little, 
and there a little. Hence the emphatic prescript of the 



70 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

apostle, "Aptness to teach," and patience in teaching. This 
gentleness of spirit is perfectly compatible with eagerness and 
intensity, both of mental action and energy of conviction. 
Nay, it is not incompatible with the keenest expression of 
honest indignation, where many lessons, given with meekness 
and patient toil, are with conscious and unconcealed malignity 
and want of integrity, resisted and openly scorned. It was 
the same voice which spoke to the woman of Samaria, with 
such faithful and yet compassionate tenderness, which broke 
in torrents of invective on the Pharisees and hypocrites. The 
fiery logic of Paul was driven by a heart full of tenderest 
pity and compassion. The ardent exposure of deadly error 
may spring from the truest desire for the well-being of the 
errorist. There is a radical distinction between zeal for the 
truth, and mere combativeness of temper, or thirst for ven- 
geance. While the ministry of the Word are commanded 
to strive earnestly for the faith delivered to the saints, the 
spirit in which that command is to be obeyed, is entirely com- 
patible with the meekness and patience with which the regular 
current instruction of the ministry is to be given, and specially 
obligatory when called upon to dissolve the difficulties of the 
candid and earnest seeker for the truth. The patient iteration 
and reiteration of the truth, the unfaltering and hopeful 
repeat of lessons which seem to fail of effect, is indispensable, 
both in the work of awakening sinners and edifying saints. 

In the third place ; another characteristic of successful 
teaching is candor and courage. The minister of the Word, 
especially in times of deep declension in religion, has often 
a dangerous task before him, to testifying to the truth, and 
against the errors and the sins of men. Some of the truths 
of the holy Word will at all times excite the pride and preju- 
dices of the human heart. There will be strong temptation 
to hide or qualify offensive ideas, and thus to avoid the hazard 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 71 

of fidelity. The symbol of the lion's face, in the apocalyptic 
vision of St. John, of the gospel ministry, was a true sugges- 
tion of the need of courage and straightforwardness in the 
discharge of the office. The whole counsel of God is to be 
declared, before the watchman will be clear from the blood of 
the slain. He is to preach the Word, whether men will hear, 
or whether they will forbear. If the Word speaks things 
either hard to be understood, or capable of being wrested to 
their own destruction by proud and insubordinate minds, or 
by those who handle them deceitfully, it is nevertheless at his 
peril, if he shuns to declare them. He is not responsible for 
anything in the record : he is responsible for the full and 
fearless repeat of his message. Xo matter how keenly the 
sword of the Spirit may cut into the pride of the intellect, 
or the passions of the heart, he must nevertheless bare the 
blade and strike. He is commanded to use sound speech, 
which cannot be condemned. This limitation does not refer 
to the condemnation of hostile hearers, who will condemn 
all teachings which contravene their views: it only requires 
faithful conformity to the sacred record, and the use of 
judicious and competent expressions, not adapted to excite 
unnecessary prejudice. Speech which may excite the con- 
demnation of ill-informed or sin-distorted minds may never- 
theless be approved by God, and all true-sighted understand- 
ings. So long as the teacher of the gospel honestly and faith- 
fully repeats the mind of the Spirit as expressed in the Word, 
he may be sure that his speech will be sound, and not capable 
of just condemnation. 

In the fourth place, he must teach prayerfully. The Word 
of God will not give up its true wealth to the prayerless 
intellect; nor will it prove the savor of life unto life, if its 
public proclamation is not accompanied with prayer and faith. 
So that neither in furnishing himself to instruct, nor in look- 



72 Uses of Holy Sceiptuee. 

ing for the fruit of his instruction, can the preacher of the 
Word discharge himself of his high responsibility without 
prayer. The sword of the Spirit, like the great brand of the 
lion-hearted king, can be wielded only by himself effectually ; 
and the minister who desires to see it mow down the mailed 
ranks of the powers of darkness, must cry ceaselessly for the 
forthputting of his strength. All the means of grace are 
designed and adapted as tests of the desire of the heart ; and 
the desire of the servant of the Lord for the success of his 
testimony, must make itself stand clear of all question at the 
throne of grace. 

In the fifth place, he must preach the Word in faith — with 
the sort of faith which is not merely the strength of conviction 
and confidence in the truth which he teaches, to which we have 
already referred ; but with that faith which is dependent 
on Christ, and the power of the Holy Ghost to give it suc- 
cess — a faith which will give him success, and also a lively 
anticipation of success. "Without me,' 7 says the Master, "ye 
can do nothing.' 7 "I can do all things through Christ," says 
the apostle of the Gentiles. "The Word is mighty through 
God to the pulling down of strongholds ;" but only through 
God. In times of spiritual prosperity, this sort of faith is 
comparatively easy ; but in times of spiritual declension, and 
even in the ordinary course of the average Christian life, it is 
a test of a masculine faith to be able to do it. To stand upon 
the cliff which overlooks the valley of dry bones — which are 
very dry, as they lie in awful masses on the old field of blood 
and carnage, tangled and weed-hidden — and cry, day and 
night, in the ghastly desert, with no response but the whistling 
of the winds or the yelp of some beast of prey ; and yet be 
firm, and cheerfully anticipate the life-giving breeze from 
heaven, and the upspring of the bones into an exceeding great 
army — this is verily a trial and a triumph of faith! Yet 



Uses or Holy Scripture. 73 

faith, submissive, tender, firm, and true, is an indispensable 
element in the preaching of the Word. 

But so preached, it will bear on the precious tide of its 
clear, strong instruction, all the blessings of a fulfilled and 
vindicated covenant. This is the species of preaching in 
which the real welfare of the church, the growth and comfort 
of the saints, the redemption of their children, and the salva- 
tion of sinful men, are all inevitably involved. This is the 
ministration of the Word which will yield peace to conscience, 
regeneration to the heart, complete victory over sin, death, 
and hell, and will send through the open gates of heaven the 
long ranks of the redeemed, with songs and everlasting joy 
upon their heads. These are the ends, and this is the min- 
istry the church ought to seek. For the people of God to 
desire chieflv to be entertained and amused bv the preaching 
of God's great gospel, will bring a curse upon the parties 
to such an intolerable abuse. ''Pray ye the Lord of the 
harvest' 7 to send forth into all the world such teachers of the 
Word, and such helpers of the faith of his people, as will 
rightly divide the Word of his grace, and sanctify the world 
through his truth. 



USES OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

FIFTH SERMON. 
The Relation of the Ministry to the Word. 

''Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth 
not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." — 2 Timothy ii. 15. 

ANOTHER of the questions raised by the relations of 
the ministry to the written Word, as those relations 
are denned in the Word itself, touches the qualifications in 
the public teacher, on which the people of God can rely as 
the helpers of their faith. The answer is given in this 
exhortation of Paul to Timothy. It is implied in the char- 
acter of the workman who needeth not to be ashamed, and in 
the right division of the truth. To explain what is meant 
by these expressions is the object before us at this time. 

1. In general terms, the qualifications which go to make 
up the character of the gospel teacher who shall have no need 
to be ashamed must be such as truly adjust him to his work. 
A fundamental quality in any teacher is an adequate know- 
ledge of the subject which he undertakes to teach. Without 
this he must be not only a failure, but a fraud. He cannot 
give what he does not possess ; and to impose himself on 
others under the assumption of a fitness which he really has 
not is falsehood and fraud. The wide scope of the subjects 
imposed upon the office of the ministry by the Word of God 
necessarily gives room for the widest possible attainments 
of knowledge, and imposes the obligation of some suitable 
degree of it. An educated ministry is demanded by the most 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 75 

obvious proprieties of the case. But the spiritual sense of 
revealed truth demands a peculiar form of knowledge which 
cannot he gained in the schools: it is the sole result of the 
tuition of the Holy Ghost. As this, after all, is the most 
important form of knowledge to the Christian teacher, it has 
sometimes happened that this species of spiritual discernment 
has laid the foundation of useful service in the pulpit, when 
few advantages of natural culture have been enjoyed. But 
these cases are extremely rare, and afford no legitimate prece- 
dent against a well-trained ministry, or against the utility 
of natural knowledge to the gospel preacher. The use which 
the sovereignty of God may have made of an untrained min- 
istry under the circumstances of a freshly-settled country, 
where no other sort of provision could he made, is no precedent 
to be followed in the face of positive laws, when no such 
excuse can be pleaded. God may suspend his own statutory 
laws at his own good pleasure; but his servants, who are 
under law, have no alternative but to obey it, so far as obedi- 
ence is not positively hindered. But the ill consequences 
of an imperfectly prepared ministry will not be checked, even 
when necessity seems to dispense with the letter of the law. 
The imperfect development of Christian principles, and the 
consequent spread of corresponding errors, must always be 
the result of failing to enforce the law, on no matter how 
plausible a pretext. The expediency of any departure from 
the strict letter of the law is doubtful, to say the least of it. 
To teach thoroughly and well, the whole counsel of God de- 
mands, under all circumstances, a knowledge of that counsel 
adequate to the purpose. 

2. But while we must earnestly contend for the vast and 
far-reaching importance of an educated ministry, we must 
also lay an increased stress on the even higher impox'tance 
of a. converted and spiritually holy ministry. The spiritual 



76 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

insight which is a part of this internal equipment is vital, 
even to the perfection of the intellectual knowledge, without 
which the teaching of the gospel becomes impossible. A holy 
heart is as necessary as a sanctified intelligence. The heart 
conditions and controls the energies of the understanding to 
a greater or less extent on all subjects amenable to moral 
reasoning, and especially on the subject of religion. A heart 
unenlightened as to its own moral and spiritual condition, 
will be apt to discount the teachings of the scriptures touching 
the depravity and true guilt of a fallen creature. A heart 
untouched by the experimental knowledge of the grace of the 
gospel, and by a real love to its provisions of mercy and 
to its glorious author, is not likely to be determined to a 
true zeai in the advocacy of his cause. Natural energy and 
party zeal can give no such results of permanent and all- 
devoted and unselfish enthusiasm for the propagation of a 
system whose true significance is hidden from view because 
of the lack of that spiritual insight which Paul pronounced 
indispensable to the discernment of spiritual things — a lack 
which will leave the natural affections of an unholy heart to 
revolt against the truth. The spiritual tone of personal char- 
acter in the preacher will also necessarily condition the influ- 
ence of his instruction by affording a practical commentary 
upon it. If his own life and character bear no testimony 
to the reality and the value of what he recommends to others, 
it is vain to expect them to accept the principles and rules 
of living which he advocates with his lips and discredits by 
his life. A godless ministry is the most unmingled curse 
which the judicial anger of God can inflict upon the church 
or the world. A loving heart, full of sympathy with the 
spiritual destitutions of mankind, is indispensable to relate 
the ministry aright towards man. A holy nature, a pure life, 
and a devoted spirit are equally indispensable to relate the 



Uses of Holy Sculpture. 77 

ministry aright towards God. It is a qualification in the min- 
istry vital to all its true ends. 

3. A candid and fearless spirit is another vital quality in 
such a ministry as is suitable and necessary for the work of 
the office and for the welfare of the people. The inexorable 
fidelity with which the Word of God exposes the guilt, lays 
bare the depraved passions, and affirms all the awful con- 
ditions of a fallen creature's status, unavoidably stirs up the 
hostility of the human heart. Every possible effort to resist 
and discredit truths so painful will be made, no matter how 
necessary a true diagnosis of a disease may be to its cure; 
and the man whose duty it is made to> expose and insist upon 
these distressing but necessary truths is sure to encounter 
more or less of this hostility. This will try his fidelity; it 
will test his candor and courage — his candor in the consid- 
eration and estimate of the truth, and his courage in proclaim- 
ing it. "I hate him, for he always prophesieth evil, and not 
good, concerning me," was the expression of an ancient sinner 
of high degree, towards a faithful messenger of the divine 
will. The resolute and honest purpose to construe the Avords 
of the Holy Ghost according to their obvious meaning, no 
matter how menacing to conscious guilt, and to refuse utterly 
to tamper with its utterances by the arts of cunning misinter- 
pretation, is essential to the true preacher of the Word. To 
proclaim all the counsel of Gocl, whether men will hear or 
forbear to hear, to convict of sin, though the demonstration 
may rouse the angry passions of those who do not know that 
conviction is essential to repentance, and repentance to salva- 
tion, demands firmness and courage to do this necessary, 
though painful, work. Courage is essential to integrity, to 
well-balanced character, and to real usefulness in every 
branch of life; and to no employment is it more essential 
than to the ministry of the gospel. 



78 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

4. Aptness to teach is another qualification essential to the 
teacher of the Word. Any amount of knowledge will fail of 
effect unless the possessor is able to communicate it to others. 
Instruction is the main business of the ministerial office ; and 
no ministerial service is of any true value which, deficient in 
instructiveness, seeks chiefly to entertain, excite, and gratify 
the taste. Facility in conveying information may exist on a 
wide scale of degrees in the Christian ministry ; but some 
efficient measure of it is indispensable. A ministry will be 
really useful in proportion to this quality, which Paul made 
prominent in the description of what sort of a minister 
Timothy should be. 

5. Meekness, patience, and faith — all allied qualities — 
are also necessary to the Christian teacher. To encounter the 
passion, prejudice, and injustice to the truth which will spring 
up in the unholy heart, when the gospel preacher is unarmored 
by the meekness of a holy heart, is to lose the object he has 
in view at the outset. To encounter the ignorance, feeble- 
ness of faculty, and slowness to apprehend, which will be 
found in many hearers without patience and forbearance, is 
also to invite defeat, To be filled with eager zeal, and yet 
to be patient and work under all the vast and protracted forms 
of resistance to the truth, requires faith in God, in the cove- 
nant, and in the promises of the King. All these things are 
indispensable qualifications in every workman in the gospel 
service, who will have no need to be ashamed. 

6. The second part of the answer given in the text to the 
question, What qualifications are necessary to such a teacher 
as may be suitable to be a helper of our faith ? is that he must 
be able rightly to divide the truth. This ability includes more 
than the analytical faculty which is able to develop the logical 
bearings of the truth, while it does emphatically include this 
gift. The Christian teacher is to reason out of the scriptures. 



Uses of Holy Scetptuee. 79 

The exposition of the words of the sacred text calls for the 
exercise of the discriminating faculty. To enable the clear 
comprehension of the exact meaning and limits of the truth 
when drawn from the record demands the exercise of the 
same analytical process. The proofs of the truth drawn from 
the scriptures, and the confirmation of their teachings from 
any other source of evidence which may be available, demand 
the same energy to be employed. To point out the relation 
of one truth to another, and to preserve undistorted the beau- 
tiful proportions and symmetry of the faith, call for this right 
division and definition of the truth. The logical bearings, 
relations, and consequences of the truth all require it. To 
show the effects and uses of the truth, all demand the exercise 
of this discrimination, without which no clear and durable 
conception can be formed. 

7. The ability rightly to divide the truth also embraces 
the duty of giving the proper degree of stress to the different 
truths contained in the scriptures ; laying suitable weight 
on the more important, and keeping the less important from 
being unduly magnified in the conceptions of the people. We 
are taught that obedience is better than sacrifice, although 
both may be required. To tithe, mint, anise, and cummin, 
and neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, and 
mercy, is to confound the natural importance of things abso- 
lutely different, though both may be required. Many of the 
prevailing errors in the church have sprung from laying 
undue stress upon matters of comparative unimportance. The 
teachers in these cases have not been able rightly to divide 
the truth. To be able to judge in such matters, exemplified 
by the case of David and the shewbread, where the lesser 
truth is clearly prescribed, yet may be lawfully postponed 
for a higher consideration, is of inexpressible value in a 
teacher of the Word. Xo more fruitful source of error is to 



80 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

be found than in this want of clear and penetrating judgment 
on the relative weight of truth. 

8. The ability to rightly divide the truth also includes the 
proper presentation of the different truths of the divine Word 
in that order in which their effect may be most wisely accom- 
plished. The law is a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. 
"By the law is the knowledge of sin." The law is designed, 
with other important purposes, to convict of sin, and to thus 
impress a sense of the need of repentance and atonement. To 
refuse to teach and use the law, as many progressive moderns 
do, and rely only on the presentation of the grace of the 
gospel to awaken and win the careless mind, is to fail to divide 
the truth aright. The law must be taught in order to con- 
vince of sin, and the gospel in order to give peace to con- 
science. It is said that the apostles a so preached that many 
believed." It is a matter of solemn responsibility in the 
Christian ministry to know how to select, proportion, and 
adapt the varied truths of the Bible in their preaching. They 
are to know how to judge the differences in the case of dif- 
ferent individuals, and how to apply the truth accordingly ; 
they are to warn the unruly, to support the weak, to comfort 
the feeble-minded, and to give to each his portion in due 
season. To know how to divide the truth is to know how to 
encourage the timid without stimulating the careless and 
presumptuous to farther neglect. It is to be skillful in warn- 
ing the secure without oppressing the feeble. There are 
phases of the truth adapted to every phase of experience; 
and to divide the truth aright is to be able to make the applica- 
tion of the truth suitable to the character and mental status 
of each individual. It demands a real knowledge of human 
nature, and a true soundness of judgment to be able to do 
this with effect. 

9. The ability rightly to divide the truth also implies the 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 81 

skill and knowledge needful to guide the private student of 
the scriptures, as well as to form the public judgment in 
distinguishing the character of different declarations of truth 
in the sacred books. Some of the contents of revelation are 
designed simply to illustrate what is true, hut not to affirm 
the actual reality of what is employed in the illustration. To 
this class belong the parable of the trees choosing the bramble 
as king. Perhaps some, if not all, the parables of our Lord, 
and the symbolic scenes of prophetic vision, are of the same 
kind. Other prescriptions of the Word were designed only 
for a temporary obligation, more or less extended. Of this 
species the whole Mosaic ritual is an example. Other pre- 
scriptions were not designed to express the permanent moral 
law, but only an accommodation made necessary by the pecu- 
liar circumstances of a peculiar case ; as, for instance, where 
the barbarity of a degraded people required a modification 
of the law in order to prevent greater excess. The govern- 
ment of a gang of roughs in a coal mine would require greater 
severity than would be just in an orderly community. Of 
this class was the Jewish law of divorce, which our Lord 
said was a permission on account of the hardness of the heart 
and the low type of moral sentiment among a people demoral- 
ized by centuries of remorseless tyranny. Of the same gen- 
eral character were the concessions to Jewish prejudice by 
the apostles, in permitting circumcision, for a time, among 
the Jewish branches of the Christian church. Some of the 
prescripts of the Word were of temporary, and some of per- 
manent design ; and it is indispensable that the teacher of 
the Word should be able to discriminate between them. The 
enormous error of clerical celibacy grew out of a mistake of 
this description, confounding a temporary with a permanent 
ordinance. Paul discouraged marriage, both among the 
officers of the church and the masses of private Christians, 



82 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

as a temporary expedient in a period of persecution; but 
commended and commanded it, as a general law for both 
classes, in all ordinary circumstances. Failing rightly to 
divide these qualifications of the law, great and desolating 
error has been developed. Without this discrimination of 
judgment, the parable of the unjust steward, who basely 
altered and sacrificed the just claims of his master for his 
own advantage, might be made the vehicle and pretext for 
the most demoralizing conceptions of duty. It was only 
the wisdom, not the integrity, of this unscrupulous trickster 
which is recommended to our imitation; his prudence in 
preparing for an inevitable emergency, not his keen-sighted 
and ingenius fraud in making that preparation. The right 
division of the truth implies the just conception of each sepa- 
rate truth of the holy scriptures, in itself, in its design, and 
in its relations to other truths of the same infallible and 
divine, yet most human, proclamation of all the truth needful 
to be believed and done, in order to salvation. The gift of a 
sound and discriminating judgment is as important, if not 
really more so, to the ministry of the Word of God than to 
any other class of men whatever. 

10. We give, in conclusion, a brief answer to the question, 
"In what does the authority of the teaching of the Christian 
ministry consist?" Certainly not in an official authority to 
settle and announce dogmatically the sense of the scriptures. 
It is to be found solely in the truth itself. ~No man is bound 
to believe anything but what the evidence shows to be true. 
Every man is bound to believe what is true, and what the 
evidence shows to be true. The authority over faith lies solely 
in the truth ; for faith is simply receiving a thing as true. 
INow the truth revealed in the scriptures is certified by God 
himself ; and this truth does not cease to be his truth because 
It is repeated by human lips. The authority to bind the 



Uses of Holy Sceiptuee. 83 

conscience to believe and obey is the sole prerogative of 
Almighty God. The bond to believe is created by all truth ; 
the bond to obey, rim back into the last analysis, is created 
by his personal excellence. In the great class of religious 
truth, the immediate obligation to believe springs from God's 
own declaration and endorsement. When that truth is either 
read by a private person, or taught by an official teacher, it 
is still God's truth, and binds to belief and obedience. The 
relation of the Christian teacher to that truth is simply to 
tell what God says; and the authority of the truth will not 
be created, but only revealed by the teacher ; and will become 
more apparent and bind more clearly on the conscience the 
more clearly the meaning of the record is brought out by the 
reasoning of the teacher out of the scriptures. The same 
rule of clear exposition of the mind of the Spirit applies to 
all the necessary inferences which are compelled out of the 
truths affirmed in the scriptures by the laws of thought. 
These necessary inferences are to be received as a part 
of the revelation given. All necessary inferences from 
scripture truth carry equal authority with those truths 
because they are compelled out of them by those laws of 
thought which God has impressed upon the process of think- 
ing. For example, when the scriptures affirm that Christ 
our Lord is God, the inference is compelled out of this truth 
that it is our duty to worship and obey him. Those inferences, 
then, are definite expressions of his will, determined by his 
truth, and expressed in the laws which he has impressed upon 
his creature, the human understanding. But all the authority 
to bind the conscience is in the truth alone, and not in the 
official functions of the teacher of the Word, in any sense, or 
shape, or degree whatever. All his claim to be heeded is con- 
ditioned on his rightly dividing the Word of God; and the 
conscience can be bound only by the truth, which in all its 



84 Uses of Holy Sceiptube. 

species is an expression of the intelligence, integrity, and 
will of God, as conveyed by his creative and providential 
power or by his moral and revealed laws. Truth binds be- 
cause it is the expression of his excellence and the instrument 
of his administration over his moral and responsible creatures. 
Truth is the expression of his knowledge, his integrity, and 
his authority to command ; it is a determination of his whole 
character, and, therefore, carries obligation upon conscience. 
Conscience can be bound in no other way. 

As the authority of the teaching of the ministry does- not 
depend upon his official function, neither does it consist in 
the clearness of the apprehension or the strength of the con- 
victions which the teacher himself may have in the truth 
of what he teaches. These are personal to the teacher ; they 
will give a certain weight and energy to the assertion of his 
views, which is often contagious, but they add nothing to the 
truth and consequent authority of his teaching. The same 
clearness of view, and the same intensity of conviction, may 
be, and often has been, concerned in the assertion of error. 
This fact shows that the authority of the teacher is not a 
mere incident of office, nor the result of energy of personal 
convictions, but solely of the truth. If he mistakes the truth 
and teaches error, his instructions carry no weight; but if 
he teaches the truth which God has revealed, he speaks with 
all the authority of God. This inference gives no undue 
magnitude to his office or his person, for the same authority 
would attach to the utterance if spoken by an idiot or a babe,, 
or repeated by a machine. The authority is in the truth 
and in him who uttered it, and in them alone. The truth 
can only be known through its evidence; the evidence is in 
the Word which God has revealed ; and the relation of the 
ministry is simply to display this evidence by repeating the 
testimony of the record, and reasoning out of the scriptures 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 85 

which his hearers are to search, like the Bereans of the apos- 
tolic era, to see if the things spoken are so. But in proportion 
to the completeness with which he develops the evidence he 
will display the truth, and thus bind the conscience. He 
himself has no power to bind the conscience directly, either 
through his office or his personal convictions; he can only 
do it indirectly by developing the evidence which discovers 
the truth, and, through the truth, creates obligation. 



USES OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

SIXTH SERMON. 
Manner of Using It. 

"Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the 
mystery of Christ." — Ephesians iii. 4. 

"Ye have not his word abiding in you." — John v. 38. 
"Comparing spiritual things with spiritual." — 1 Cor. ii. 13. 

HAVING vindicated the right of all men as sinners, 
under a dispensation of grace, to use all the means 
and instruments appointed to be used in order to secure the 
salvation offer ed in the gospel — the holy scriptures among 
others — we now propose to draw from these sacred records 
their own prescriptions, touching the manner in which they 
ought to be employed, in order to obtain the blessing connected 
in the gracious purposes of God with their right use. 

1. In the first place, there ought always to be an habitual 
recognition of their sanctity as the Word of God, given by 
the Holy Ghost. No habit of mind could be more disastrous 
than an established custom of sinking the sacred character 
of the Scriptures, in an estimate not specifically different 
from the estimate of all other books. The esteem yielded 
to an address from some high and important public character, 
who has entitled himself to the respect of his country by his 
service to the public, is felt to be due, and the refusal of it 
a breach of good taste, as well as of moral obligation. To 
place the farewell address of Washington on a level with the 
appeal of a candidate for constable would be a reflection on 
the intelligence and moral feeling of the community. A 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 87 

reverent spirit, bred by the recognition that when we open 
our Bibles we are attending to the very words of Almighty 
God, is of the utmost importance to the right and profitable 
use of the sacred books. It is truly as if "the still small voice" 
in which God spoke to Samuel in the temple at Shiloh, and 
Elijah on the crags of Sinai, was sounding in our ears. The 
old pagan Greek, when he went up on the steep of Delphos to 
consult the oracle of Apollo, listened with unutterable awe 
to the cries of the Pythoness as she writhed on the tripod of 
the temple. Reverence was the logical demand from his point 
of view. The prophet wrapped his face in his mantle, when 
the still, soft notes of the awful voice fell on his ears. Some- 
thing of the same spirit of reverence should animate all our 
conceptions of the scriptures. Xo thing could be a fitter pre- 
paration for attending suitably to what the record may utter. 
Xothing could more effectively drive out the spirit of cavill- 
ing, and the disposition to question, qualify, or reject what- 
ever statement might tempt the spirit of unbelief. To listen 
reverently is preparatory to listening with a believing and 
an obedient spirit. All trifling; all undue haste; all dis- 
positions adverse to the grave, tender tone and lofty authority 
of the sacred books, should be put away when we deliberately 
put our minds in contact with the mind of God. To read the 
letter of a dead mother, full of the tenderness and solicitude 
of her heart for the welfare of her child, with a spirit of 
mockery or indifference, would shock us by its incongruous 
violence to all right feeling. The spirit of our reading of 
God's Word should be answerable to his dignity, and to the 
immeasurable importance of his communications to us. 

2. In the second place, we should always come to the use 
of the scriptures with a suitable recognition of their function 
as a means of grace, and with an attitude of mind adjusted to 
this part of their appointed character. A feeling of our 



85 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

personal need of the things which these words were written 
to secure ; an intense desire to receive that Messing in rich 
degrees ; an earnest purpose and determination to shun all 
preventives of its coining, and gain it in some good measure 
if possible, is a necessary and altogether a becoming frame 
of mind in which to open our Bibles. Great dearth of spir- 
itual favor may often be traced to a careless handling of the 
holy book. This species of aspiration after profit in the use 
of the scriptures is marked in some of the utterances of the 
inspired writers. "O how love I thy law: it is my medita- 
tion all the day: it is sweeter to my mouth than honey and 
the honey-comb." It is well-nigh incredible that any soul 
should come to the use of the Word of God with this open, 
eager expectancy and hope of refreshment, and fail to receive 
at least a measure of fulfilled expectation and desire. 

3. Yet further: as the states of our minds in handling 
the Word of God should be suitably adjusted, not only to the 
high character and claims of the divine revelation, but also 
to the various kinds of truth which it brings to view — a rule 
of use which is all-important to the right employment of 
them — we must distinctly recognize our dependence upon the 
influences of the Holy Spirit and the help of Christ, the 
Prophet of the Covenant, in our study of the sacred oracles. 
He can, and he must, open our understandings to understand 
the scriptures, as he did those of the two 'disciples on the way 
to Emmaus. Under the provisions of the covenant of grace, 
he has provided the influences of the Spirit to redeem his 
pledge to every believer, to open their blind eyes and enlighten 
them in the knowledge of God. "The natural man receiveth 
not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, 
because they are spiritually discerned." There are two forms 
of knowledge, or ways of knowing the same thing: one the 
simple recognition of it as a fact; the other, the true compre- 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 89 

hension of the real significance of the fact, By the one kind 
of knowledge we may know that fire will burn without touch- 
ing it; by the other, Ave may know the very same thing, but 
in a very different way, by touching it. To know the immor- 
tality of the soul, under the one kind, is simply to know that 
the soul will never die. To know it under the other species 
of knowledge is to see into the significance of the grand fact 
until the flesh creeps upon the bones and the hair stiffens upon 
the head. To have the first kind of knowledge of the contents 
of the scriptures is possible without the aid of the Holy 
Spirit; to have the second is impossible. The first is com- 
petent to earthly scholarship and faculty on natural con- 
ditions ; the other requires the aid of the supernatural grace 
of God for the reason Paul states, "The natural man receiveth 
not the things of the Spirit, neither can he know them, be- 
cause they are spiritually discerned." At the same time, it 
is also true that, even in the sphere of natural knowledge, the 
aid of Almighty God may be rationally sought under the 
general law of the dependence of the creature upon the cre- 
ator. Lord Bacon says there is something accidental in ail 
thought. By consequence, even in natural knowledge, there 
is a possibility of one man's being led to see things which 
another man, perhaps more gifted, may not see. Hence it is 
not either irrational or unscriptural to pray for the guidance 
and aid of our divine Guardian, even in studying the scrip- 
tures on the level of mere natural knowledge. He thus opened 
the understanding of the Emmaus disciples to take in the 
real meaning of the prophecies concerning the Messiah. But 
in reference to the other form of knowledge, the spiritual dis- 
cernment of the spiritual sense of scripture, there is no possi- 
bility of attaining it, except through the influences of the 
Prophet of the Covenant and his Holy Spirit on the spiritual 
intuitions of the soul. Hence then, on account of both forms 



90 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

of knowledge, and the important dependence on the grace of 
God for the perfection of attainment in either, it is a vital 
matter in the study of the Word of God to recognize our 
Lord in his office as the Prophet of his people, and look to 
him for guidance and enlightenment in the discovery of the 
truth. The more habitually and effectively this is done, the 
more will our profiting in the study of the Word of God 
appear. 

4. As a matter of course, this dependence on Christ and the 
influence of his Spirit involves, as an indispensable concomi- 
tant of all successful investigation of the scriptures, the un- 
ceasing spirit and employment of prayer. It is one of those 
marvellous results which demonstrate the profound distinction 
between the Bible and all other books, that while a true and 
approximately complete knowledge in all the spheres of 
natural knowledge may be gained without prayer, the Bible 
will not yield its real treasure without it. A man may be a 
profound scholar in the natural knowledge of the scriptures ; 
a learned commentator ; an astute critic in its style, structure, 
and the idioms of its language ; a profound philosopher in its 
logic, and yet have not the faintest conception of its true 
significance. Examples of this sort are on the records of the 
church. Such knowledge is always built up without prayer — 
without any real appeal to Christ as the Prophet and to the 
influences of the Holy Spirit. "The letter killeth : the Spirit 
only maketh alive." Let it be a fixed principle to begin, 
accompany, and end all study of the oracles of God with 
earnest prayer that the Prophet of the Covenant would open 
our understandings to understand the Scriptures, and to give 
us the Lloly Spirit to lead us into the truth. The well-nigh 
abject stupidity with which the disciples of our Lord failed 
to see the meaning of his plain premonitions of the coining 
event in his personal history, gives a lesson to all mankind 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 91 

of the perpetual need of an influence on the individual mind 
in taking in the full significance of the truth. 'Note, too, 
that the truth which they so completely misapprehended was 
not drawn from a written record, but given them by the lips 
of a living and inspired teacher, which shows that the Roman- 
ist rule so persistently asserted against the scriptures is as 
powerless to lead into the correct conception of the truth 
without an influence on the individual, opening the under- 
standing, as a written record could possibly be. Christ re- 
peatedly told his disciples that he was to die and rise from 
the dead; but their minds were so completely dominated 
by their own preconceptions of a Messiah living and 
reigning in great earthly splendor, that they failed utterly 
to comprehend the plainest words he could use. Whatever the 
rule of faith may be, the necessity of an influence on the sin- 
blinded eyes of individual men cannot be evaded. 

5. Yet again: while the scriptures are the Word of God, 
and a means of grace, it is also necessary to remember that 
the Bible is a book written for human understandings, in 
human language, in human forms of thought, under the guid- 
ance of all the ordinary laws of human language ; and, con- 
sequently, it is to .be studied under the same rules of con- 
struction as any other book. The necessity of recognizing 
it as the Word of Almighty God, and according it a suitable 
reverence, does not abolish the necessity to interpret it by 
the ordinary laws of construing human language. Its state- 
ments are to be investigated under the guidance of the laws of 
grammar and the usage of the language in which they are 
written. Its thoughts, when taken out of the words used to 
convey them, are to be formulated according to their logical 
relations and interdependence, and constructed into a system, 
according to the natural and universally prevalent laws of 
thought, just as every other system of ideas ; and as any such 



92 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

system will be discredited if it proves to be incoherent, and 
worthy of respect if found logically consistent, so will the 
theology of the scriptures be vindicated. To study the Word 
of God to any real and material advantage to our thorough 
knowledge of its system of doctrine, the student is compelled 
to the observance of several all-important maxims. The mere 
devotional reading of the sacred books will allow of a less 
strict observance of these rules of systematic study, though 
it, too, would be profited by some attention to them. 

In the first place, the reading of the scriptures must be 
conducted as a real study. The record will yield a benefit to 
any kind of honest inquiry, but it will not yield its richest 
treasure to any perfunctory handling. The command is to 
"search the scriptures" ; to "study to show our profiting in 
the Word of God." The prevailing habit of many Christian 
people, in the mere skimming of the sacred page, is really 
a habit full of danger. It is only a few degrees above no 
handling of the record at all. The notion which underlies 
the usage is utterly mistaken. It seems as if the Bible was 
construed as a sort of charm, an amulet of holy witchcraft, 
a spiritual battery which will discharge its mystic forces by 
mere contact. We are to be "sanctified by the truth," and 
the necessary condition to the action and effect of the truth 
is the grasp of the truth by the intellect. Other things being 
equal, the more the intellect comprehends of the truth, the 
more will its sanctifying power be felt. The more the signifi- 
cance and weight of the idea of moral accountability is com- 
prehended, the more effective will be its influence upon char- 
acter and conduct. The more every doctrine of the Christian 
faith is understood, the more will the power of each of them 
be impressed upon the soul. 

This fact then suggests the second maxim, which is im- 
portant in the use of the scriptures. It has been suggested 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 93 

that the laws of interpretation must be applied to get at the 
meaning of the record, and some knowledge of these laws 
is indispensable. The characteristic of the scriptures which 
makes the application of the usual laws of construing human 
language so important, is the fact that they are written in 
human words and in the use of metaphors and figures which 
are characteristic of human language and modes of thought. 
The legitimate effect of applying the laws of construction to 
the record is the enforcement of definite conceptions of the 
truth stated. It is an evil habit to pass any statement of the 
record without having some definite notion of its meaning. 
This definiteness of conception is the necessary preliminary 
to the formation of those approximate conceptions of the 
weight and significance of the truth taught, of which we have 
just spoken. Many readers of the Bible are guided in their 
use of it by mere mechanical habit. They read such a number 
of chapters or verses by mere rote ; and their consciences are 
not satisfied unless they complete the daily tale. The com- 
prehension of what is read is altogether secondary to the 
quantity which is read. This is a false habit, which needs to 
be corrected. A certain dignity and deliberation, indicated 
by the avoidance of all undue haste in reading, is entirely 
appropriate, provided it is attended with the real and definite 
understanding of the sense. But far better, like Paul in the 
matter of prayer in an unknown tongue, take in five words 
with the understanding than ten thousand words which carry 
no light to the mind. It is a good rule to take up into the 
thoughts, morning or night, a single utterance of the Holy 
Ghost, and busy the mind about it at intervals during the day, 
as time and other duties may allow. This fearless formation 
of definite conceptions of the truths stated in the record read 
is very important to the moral, as well as the intellectual, 
handling of the scriptures. It is a strong help to that honesty 



94 Uses of Holy Scriptuee. 

of heart in dealing with the truth which is so strongly urged 
by the sacred writers, and is so obviously proper. We are 
warned against handling the Word of God deceitfully, or 
wresting it to our own destruction. A true knowledge of the 
rules of interpretation will prevent all attempts to escape from 
hard and difficult things by ingenious constructions. The 
use of these rules is friendly to integrity of purpose, as well 
as accuracy of conclusion. 

The third maxim growing out of the necessity of really 
grasping the truth, in order to realize its power to sanctify, 
is to form a habit of thought about the truth when it is ex- 
tracted from the record. It is of great importance to learn 
to think out the relations, limits, and uses of the truth. We 
are commanded to "compare scripture with scripture, and 
spiritual things with spiritual things." The searching of the 
scriptures by the Bereans is commended. "Reasoning out of 
the scriptures" is warranted by the example of the apostles, 
and is absolutely necessary to completeness of view into the 
grand system of Christ. The logical structure of this divine 
philosophy of God, man, and the universe, is equal in its intel- 
lectual combination of its dependent parts to any system the 
world has ever known, and superior to them all in the cer- 
tainty of its knowledge of facts, and in its moral and spiritual 
quality. It is of high value to understand the analogy of the 
faith, and the harmony of all its parts. It is due to the neglect 
of this mode of handling the Word of God, that the average 
Christian of our day really understands so little of the grand 
doctrines of the gospel, and, by consequence, derives so little 
comfort and personal satisfaction from his own cherished 
share in them. If the doctrines of justification and adoption 
lay in the minds and hearts of Christians in the simplicity 
and completeness with which they lie in the scriptures, there 
would be far more rejoicing and happy Christians than there 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 95 

are. These great things delineated in the verbal descriptions 
of them which we call doctrines, reach down deep into the 
vital processes of Christian living and Christian comfort. 
Every follower of Christ ought to comprehend and hold fast 
the whole glorious system in which their hope and confidence 
are fixed. They can never do this without constant and active 
employment of all their mental energies upon it. None need 
fear ever to exhaust the interest or reach the limit of this 
knowledge. The grand scheme will expand forever before 
the opening intellects of saint and angel. 

6. This necessity for study and though tf ulness in the use 
of the scriptures suggests another condition for the most 
profitable employment of them; it ought to be a systematic 
and daily thing. The proportion of time allowable for this 
deliberate use of the sacred record will vary according to the 
conditions of life in the history of each individual. Some 
will find more time than others ; but it may be laid down as 
a law of application, strictly universal, that no one who is 
seeking spiritual profit and growth in grace can under any 
circumstances of regular living entirely neglect the serious 
daily use of this great means of grace without serious loss. 
Even if only ten minutes can be given to it, the deliberate 
and earnest use of the daily scripture and prayer ought to be 
rigorously observed. It cannot be neglected with impunity. 
The real magnitude of the work not only illustrates the neces- 
sity of the firm daily use of small fragments of time, but 
also the infinite value of the Sabbath as a day reserved to 
sacred uses. 

7. This necessity of real study of the Word also illustrates 
another important condition of successful Bible study; and 
that is the use of all such helps as may be available to the 
increase of information touching the teaching of the scrip- 
tures. The ministry are appointed as teachers of the law, 



96 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

and the people are to seek their aid in their own study of 
the record. Certainly, if there were more of this earnest 
searching of the scriptures, there would be a far more inter- 
ested attendance upon public preaching, and a far higher and 
broader teaching in the pulpit. Boohs, commentaries, and 
maps, illustrative of historical and geographical facts and 
metaphors in the language of the record, are very helpful in 
the study of the "Word of grace." In the daily use of scrip- 
ture by the average Christian, male or female, the use of such 
helps must needs be scanty and imperfect. To this class of 
readers, a book partly expository and partly devotional, like 
Jay's Morning and Evening Exercises, would be of great 
value. The church and the world are richer now in a litera- 
ture illustrative of the sacred books than at any previous 
period of history ; none need be without cheap and valuable 
assistance in the study of the Bible. 

8. This necessity of energetic study and active employment 
of the reflective faculties upon the matter drawn from the 
Word of God also involves, in a high scale of importance, 
the fixation of Bible knowledge in the memory. "Remember 
the words of Moses which he commanded you." "Therefore 
we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which 
we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip." 
Fix in the mind something of what you read, every time you 
do it. Fix the order of the facts, as, for instance, in the 
life of Christ. Fix the logical order of the Christian doc- 
trine with the arguments and testimonies of scripture in 
proof. Commit the words of the record to memory. There 
is great loss involved in the lack of this storage of the Word 
to both the private Christian and the teacher of the Word. 
"Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I sin not against 
thee." "The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit." Unless 
fixed in the memory, this sword is not ready to his hand when 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 97 

lie comes to the help of the believer in the hour of temptation. 
The digest in thought of the truths of the gospel is greatly 
dependent upon the consignment of that truth to memory. 
To read and not remember is the next thing to not reading 
at all. Accurate and well-stored knowledge is as valuable 
to the useful effects of religious truth as it is to every other 
kind of truth. It is a habit of mind of inestimable value 
in seeking to grow in the knowledge of the truth which it has 
pleased God to reveal for our salvation. 

9. It is also necessary, to the full profit of reading the 
Word of God, that it should be read with a real faith in all 
its teachings. "The word did not profit a certain class of 
those who heard the preaching of the apostles, because it 
was not mixed with faith." Christ told the Jews they did 
not really believe the writings of Moses, to whom they were 
fanatically devoted; for if "ye had believed his writings, 
ye would have believed my words." The value of any state- 
ment is destroyed unless it is believed ; refusal to credit 
it as true reduces it to a nullity. The suspension of all the 
benefits of the gospel upon faith in the receiver of the good, 
news is not altogether a matter of a divine appointment; 
faith is necessary to give effect to the truth. Come to the 
Word of God with a lively sense of the absolute truth of all 
its grand revelations. Come to it, trembling at its warnings 
and menaces against obdurate impenitence. God is pitiful 
to him who trembles at his word. Fear is properly employed 
to bring men up to a watchful and guarded walk. Over- 
security is the ruin of thousands. It is a wise caution, "Be 
not high-minded, but fear." Come with real faith in all the 
provisions and promises of the Word. It assures us that the 
u blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin" ; confidence in that 
statement will bring peace to conscience. All the promises 

are "yea and amen in Christ Jesus" ; faith in them will fill 

7 



98 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

the heart with hope. The Word of God is true; coming to 
its study with this truth firmly fixed in our confidence, we 
can trust all its statements as guides out of error. "Ye do 
err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God." The 
sword of the Spirit is a deadly weapon against all error — 
against temptation and practical yielding to sin. Under 
the power of faith, count all scripture profitable for doctrine, 
for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteous- 
ness. Every part of the sacred record has its own purpose 
to serve, if we are wise enough to discover it. Faith in the 
word will also lead us to read it with a watchful care to obey 
its directions. It is a record of energetic universal truths ; 
and we read it with loss of profit, unless we read it as the 
descriptive sheet of a grand living panorama of events and 
facts, developed and to be developed, by conformity or non- 
conformity, to the great living laws and principles which have 
been revealed from heaven. The historical fulfilment of the 
divine Word is not merely, or even mainly, the fulfilment of 
prophecy; but the verification of the eternal principles of 
moral law and revealed grace, as illustrated in the actual 
coiurse of human affairs. Thus read, it will furnish a power- 
ful current antidote to unbelief in all its forms, developed in 
the administration of actual events. Reading with faith will 
also create the wholesome resolve to accept all the affirmations 
of God in his Word, in spite of pride, prejudice and passion. 
The contact of a superior mind with an inferior will always 
yield something of mystery and difficult of comprehension to 
the intelligence of the inferior faculty. There are many 
things in the scriptures hard to be understood. What we 
know not now we shall know hereafter. It is wise to read 
God's word, as if it really was what it is — the utterance of 
an infinitely superior understanding ; and thus not be driven 
from our confidence because we are not able to comprehend 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 99 

all it is pleased to announce. We can accept the fact, even 
though we are not able to understand all that it involves. 
Lastly, faith will dictate another and final condition of profit 
in reading the Scriptures; this is, to go to the wondrous 
records anxious to learn the method of active service they 
prescribe. To study any record with a pointed and practical 
purpose in view — to learn what to do and how to do it — will 
always give definiteness to what we learn. Go to the scrip- 
tures resolved to do what we can ascertain to be his will, and 
anxious to learn, in order that we may do. "Ye shall do all 
the words of this law." This keen-pointed purpose will 
always prevent any form of dullness or lack of interest in the 
reading or hearing of the Word. 

10. Lastly, we shall allude briefly to the sin and peril of 
negligence or indifference in the use of the scriptures. It 
is a sin of extraordinary presumption. It says in effect, "God 
speaks to me, but I don't care if he does; I shall pay no 
attention to him." The neglected Bibles in our homes are the 
occasions of deadly insult to the Great King. The Christian 
Delphos is at our hearth-stones ; but we contemn the oracle 
which speaks with infinitely more power and persuasive influ- 
ence than the cry of the frenzied Pythoness of old. It is 
just the same sin, as if the still far-off voice which spoke to 
Elijah was sending its sweet-toned, thrilling accents through 
our chambers, and we should reply, "Shut up ! I want to hear 
nothing you have to say." A Bible is the articulate Word of 
God; a neglected Bible, wilfully prevented from speaking 
to us, is just the response, "I don't want to hear a word from 
you." It is needless to illustrate the presumption, folly and 
peril of such an audacious sin — so keen in its insult — so 
daring in its blasphemy. If God has seen the necessity of 
speaking to us in articulate words, it is obvious wisdom and 
reverence for us to hearken for our lives. 

L.oFC. 



USES OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 

SEVENTH SERMON. 

Manner of Hearing it Preached. 

"And he called the multitude and said unto them, Hear and under- 
stand." — Matthew xv. 10. 

ONE last question remains to be answered in connection 
with the rich subject of our relations to the written 
Word : the proper relation of the people to the official teach- 
ing of the Word by the Christian ministry. Their right and 
duty to search the scriptures for themselves, and the manner 
in which they ought to search them ; and the relation of the 
ministry to the written word having been illustrated, the im- 
portant question demands attention, "In what way the people 
should listen to the public exposition of the revealed mind 
of the Holy Spirit? 77 Man is so seriously damaged in all 
the powers of his spiritual structure that he is prone to error 
in apprehending the truth, no matter how carefully he may 
be instructed. He needs line upon line. He is prone to 
extremes ; to over or underestimates ; and it is a thing of 
the first and last concern to him that he should know how 
to hear, and how to handle the instructions of the official 
teachers of the gospel. Christ gave this explicit warning, 
"Take heed how ye hear; for unto him that hath, shall be 
given ; and unto him that hath not, shall be taken even that 
which he hath. 77 That is to say, those who>, in listening to- 
the words of God, get some knowledge of his truth, and put 
it into practice, will gain a profit by it ; but those who, after 
listening, have nothing, retain nothing, and turn nothing to 



Uses of Holy Sceipture. 101 

account, will lose even that which was given them, even the 
gratuitous lesson from which they derived no benefit, will 
be entirely lost to them. Therefore, take heed to the way 
in which you hear. 

1. It is practically an important thing, in attending on the 
public teaching of the divine Word, that the mind and heart 
should be put into an attitude of preparation and expectancy. 
A season of prayer, more or less protracted, and the deliberate 
recognition of the work about to be done before going to the 
house of worship, is a consideration of real practical moment. 
The preaching of the gospel is not merely an exercise of the 
understanding, in giving and receiving instruction; but it 
is an ordinance and established part of divine worship. The 
difficulties in the way of the successful employment of this 
ordinance are not merely the difficulties arising from un- 
trained faculty common to instruction on all subjects, but 
also the peculiar inaptness to receive spiritual truth growing 
out of the moral and spiritual condition of the soul, and out 
of the unseen, but positive, efforts to obstruct the light, made 
by spiritual enemies. Satan never meddles with any man 
learning mathematics or chemistry ; but he always does with 
the man trying to learn the way of salvation. E"o ordinance 
of divine worship, no one of the means of grace, can be made 
effectual without the aids of divine grace in the motions of 
the Holy Spirit. To appeal for the help of that influence, 
then, and to order the mind and heart into some suitable 
preparation by prayer and meditation, is always of real and 
very great practical importance in the use of any and all the 
appointed ordinances. The apparent waste of so much strong 
and well-prepared pulpit instruction is no doubt due, in part, 
to the neglect of this preliminary preparation on the part 
of the people, and the general want of recognition of the 
importance and necessity for it. The house of God is entered 



102 Uses of Holy Sckiptuee. 

with no preliminary ordering of the thoughts ; the mind and 
heart are not adjusted to receive impressions; and conse- 
quently, like the ill-prepared plate of a careless photographer, 
no perfect and abiding impression from the light of the divine 
Word can be made. The student of any science who enters 
the lecture-rooms of his school with the best preparatory fur- 
niture, both of knowledge and awakened mental energy, will 
gain more from the additional light thrown into the mind. 
The worshipper who comes to receive a new lesson in divine 
things, with the best preparation of prayer, and thoughtful 
recollection of the purpose for which he enters the sanctuary, 
will receive the most benefit, under the same law of mental 
action. 

2. Hear the public exposition of the scriptures with real 
attention. The command of the text, "Hear and understand," 
is only a special application to the teaching of religion of 
a general maxim necessarily determined by the fundamental 
demand of all forms of instruction. If not understood, its 
whole purpose is defeated. The main object of teaching is 
to instruct, with a view to the increase of knowledge, and 
through knowledge, to determine action and modify character. 
If so rendered that for any reason it cannot be understood, 
its whole aim, or set of aims, is prevented. The object of 
the preaching of the gospel is to enable and advance the 
understanding of the truth which God has revealed in order 
to the salvation of mankind. The declaration of the scrip- 
tures, the exact meaning and limitations of each grand truth 
of the Christian system, the force of all the powerful induce- 
ments to accept it, must be understood in order to accomplish 
their ends. To understand anything the mind must attend 
to it ; and so absolute is the connection between attention and 
clear understanding, that the progress in knowledge will be 
rigorously controlled by the degree in which the energies of 



Uses of Holy Scriptuke. 103 

the mind are fixed upon the subject. The importance of 
attending to the preaching of the gospel with this roused 
and resolute energy of the intellect cannot be overstated. The 
voice of God has uttered no truth which is not of grave im- 
portance. "All scripture is profitable." Much of it requires 
concentrated force of mind to comprehend it. Its teachings 
take hold upon the most vital interests of human existence. 
Every consideration which has made it important for God to 
speak, makes it important for man to hear and understand 
what he has said ; and the fixed energy of his powers of com- 
prehension is indispensable to do this. Yet more : let it never 
be forgotten that there are special obstructions to the reception 
of the truth revealed from heaven, and, consequently, a special 
necessity for counteracting vigilance. Far too often is the 
deadly purpose of the tempter to nullify the gracious ends 
of the truth, accomplished by the skillful manipulation of 
the natural inaptness, or the moral stupefactions of the mind, 
just in this matter of attention. He distracts the thoughts ; 
he deadens the sensibility which would give interest to the 
truth ; he picks up the seed as soon as it is sown. The results 
are fearful. Many persons attend preaching for years, yet 
never hear it. They are utterly wearied under the grand 
illumination of the gospel of grace. Nowhere are they bored 
with such exquisite vigor and success as in the service of the 
sanctuary. The immortal cressets kindled by the finger of 
God to illumine the darkness, and reveal the most precious 
interests of the human race, fall in vain on the dull, horny 
eyes of the inattentive observer. The result is the same as 
if the gospel was never proclaimed to him; he never hears 
it ; he is a self-made heathen ; he places himself in the exact 
position of the pagan who has never heard the story of re- 
demption ; but with the one tremendous difference, of respon- 
sibility infinitely enhanced. Want of attention nullifies the 



104 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

whole deliverance of the truth. It is as if one tried to rouse 
a self-absorbed muser to an approaching tempest of appalling 
wind, levelling all before it, and whose only response is a 
dull, vacant wandering of the eye in the opposite direction. 
Want of attention is saying to the awful voice of an articulate 
God, keenly remonstrating, persuading, and urging to action, 
"I am sleepy ; let me alone." 

3. It is a legitimate suggestion, distinct from attention, 
although they are always inseparably connected, to say that 
it is vital to all solid profiting under gospel preaching, to hear 
with intense desire to receive the full benefit of public instruc- 
tion. As the leading function of the ministry is to teach, 
the leading obligation of the hearer is to learn. As the full 
development of the truth involves far more than the mere 
statement of the truth, and embraces the formation of just 
conceptions of the truth, with a view to affect the feelings of 
the hearer, as well as his judgment, just so the wise effort 
of the receiver of the double impression should lead him to 
adjust himself to both, and be ready to be impressed, as well 
as instructed. Such a discipline would lead him into a career 
of endless growth in the knowledge and conception of Chris- 
tian truth, and into an endless increase of energy and of 
personal holiness. This possibility of unceasing growth in 
knowledge and spiritual strength is powerfully adapted to 
enkindle the desire of the soul. To take new views of the 
truth without departing from it; to have old, familiar ideas 
freshened, enlarged and intensified to our view; to form 
deeper and clearer, stronger and more complete notions of 
the blessedness of those who believe; to see more into the 
fullness and wealth of the promises ; to gain larger apprehen- 
sions of the grace and power of the Saviour of sinners — all 
these great Christian truths are powerfully adapted to stir 
up the languid affections of the heart. This is the spirit 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 105 

which will bring blessing in the hearing of the Word. Our 
highest interests are concerned in this revealed truth; by 
it we shall stand or fall in the judgment; by it the destinies 
for eternity will be determined. As this is the truth of 
Almighty God, the grand declaration he has been pleased 
to make to a world of sinning immortals, this fact alone is 
sufficient to proclaim the infinite dignity, weight and impor- 
tance of what is contained in the revelation made by him. 
If it does not interest us, the fault is in ourselves — in our 
own blindness. A stupid lout may stand before a great paint- 
ing, the masterpiece of an immortal artist, and see nothing 
but an unintelligible mass of forms and colors ; but the blind- 
ness will be in himself, and this insensibility will infer no 
reproach upon the perfection of the work of art. Just so, 
any lack of interest in God's great gospel can only spring 
from a wholly incompetent apprehension of what it is. Let 
us elevate our conceptions of the grand truths revealed to us ; 
and then we shall be able to do a higher measure of justice 
to the majesty of God, and to our own weightiest interests, 
by making our desires to know and appreciate his truth more 
adequate to the dignity and value of the truth itself. 

4. Hear the Word with real candor; with a spirit bent 
upon obtaining the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth. This disposition is exceedingly rare. Men listen 
to what falls in with their own views with eagerness and 
delight; but to all statements which impeach their own con- 
victions they listen with undisguised aversion. Many refuse 
to hear at all anything which grates upon their prejudices 
or awakens questioning thoughts. If anything is said with 
this result, they at once absent themselves from the worship 
of God. Others draw themselves up into a shell, more im- 
penetrable than the shell of a tortoise. Others listen with an 
expression of contempt, sometimes offensively undisguised. 



106 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

All this is a wrong way in which to receive teachings which 
are erroneous. It invariably indicates a defective knowledge, 
or a defective confidence in the views which are held as against 
the offensive error. If one has a clear and intelligent compre- 
hension of his own accepted views and the evidence which 
supports them, and really confides in the grounds upon which 
they rest, no counter assertion will ever awaken a spirit of 
resentment w T hen they are impugned. No one who holds the 
truth need ever fear to review the evidence of it, no matter 
how frequently. Nay, the doctrine of contraries, the philoso- 
phers tell us, is one ; and, whatever that may mean, it is 
certain that we never see any idea so clearly as in the light 
of its contrast. It is often the very strongest confirmation 
of a truth to listen to an exposition of its antagonist error. 
While morally considered, looking to the effect upon our own 
disposition, and the fair judicial spirit which is willing, with- 
out prejudice or passion, to look at both sides of a question, 
is eminently healthful. There is, again, nothing more power- 
ful, as an advocacy of the truth, than this candid and liberal 
spirit in holding our own views and in construing those who 
differ from us. The narrow bigotry, which can never hear 
a doubt of its own principles without resentment, or an un- 
charitable construction of the personal character and con- 
victions of an opponent, is not only depraving to the character 
and a reproach to the understanding, but a hindrance to the 
cause of the misguided advocate of the truth. Remember 
that our allegiance is due only to God, and our obligation 
is only to the truth. The truth stands upon its evidence, and 
claims acceptance only as it is made manifest. It can only 
be refused by a mis judgment of the evidence. The most 
formidable obstruction to the view of the evidence lies in 
the states of our own minds — in the ignorance and prejudice 
which color the field of view in our own understandings. 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 107 

Consequently prejudice, even in favor of the truth, hinders 
the just conception of the truth ; and when not in favor of 
the truth, will altogether prevent the discernment of it. The 
other hindrance to the correct judgment of evidence — that is, 
ignorance — can only be removed by instruction. Conse- 
quently the acknowledged obligation to receive what is true 
absolutely demands resistance to whatever may hinder the 
right judgment of evidence; and the conclusion irresistibly 
emerges that both prejudice and ignorance must be compelled 
by an honest conscience to listen and fairly judge. As an 
adjunct to this spirit of candor in hearing the exposition of 
the holy scriptures, hear with entire independence. Without 
a full recognition of our personal independence of all human 
authority in forming the judgment and accepting the prin- 
ciples, for which we are to answer for ourselves alone at the 
bar of God, there can be no real candor in hearing, and 
without candor no real independence. This personal inde- 
pendence in the formation of our views is the necessary cor- 
rollary of personal responsibility. The Holy Spirit puts the 
searching question, "Who art thou, that judgest another man's 
servant ? to his own master he standeth or f alleth." Any 
just conception of this great truth, the absolute independence 
of every human soul of all powers and authorities save that 
of God alone, will put an end to all want of candor, to all 
reluctance to listen to evidence, to all unmanly weakness and 
resentment of differences, and poise the intellect on the basis 
of fairness and love simply of the truth. There is no power 
or authority outside of the truth and the evidence to compel 
assent. To construe the "compel them to come in" of the 
parable of the great supper to be the compulsion ,of physical 
force, is to contradict the whole spirit of the Christian insti- 
tute, and the positive assertion that the kingdom of Christ 
is not a kingdom of this world. It is the compulsion of reason 



108 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

and strong persuasion, based upon the infinite inducements 
of the gospel. Every man is distinctly empowered to accept 
or reject the offer of amnesty for his sins, on his own high 
and direct responsibility to God, and to him only. When 
really alive to his own divinely authorized freedom and inde- 
pendence in the formation of his views, a man will have no 
difficulty in exorcising the green-eyed devil of bigotry and 
intolerance. He is only responsible to God; to his own 
master alone he standeth or falleth. Truth alone binds his 
conscience, or has any claim to control his faith. ]STo party 
has the right to construe the evidence for him. He alone 
is responsible for his acceptance or rejection of the truth, for 
his judgment upon the evidence. He cannot evade or escape 
from that responsibility; he had as well attempt to walk 
away from his own shadow. He may accept what guidance 
he pleases in his search for the mind of the Spirit, free of all 
human dictation; but will never cease to be responsible to 
God for what guidance he accepts, and for every step he takes 
to his conclusion, and for the conclusion itself. The dictum 
of the church, the opinions of friends, or the Word of God — ■ 
no matter what his accepted rule or standard of faith may 
be, he will inevitably stand answerable in his own person for 
his conclusion, and for the means which he has adopted to 
reach it. If God has revealed his will, it is safe to follow 
him. The plain words of the scriptures, and all just and 
necessary inferences from the declarations of scripture, do- 
bind the conscience; but even in rejecting these, a man is 
responsible to God only. The Almighty King does not inter- 
fere with the freedom of the human will, even in regard to 
sin. Man may sin, if he is mad enough to do it. If he rejects 
the truth as God has given it, God will judge and condemn: 
if he accepts it, God will judge and approve ; but in neither 
case has any human individual or organization, civil or eccle- 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 109 

siastical, been authorized to determine the judgment of God, 
much less to execute it when it is a judgment of condemna- 
tion. From all this aggregate of scripture teaching upon 
the relation of the individual to the reading and to the public 
teaching of the Word of God, the obligation and the right 
to read and hear the gospel preached with entire independence 
of all human dictation and control, stands clear in view. The 
obligation to candor in both reading and hearing is of plain 
and obvious moral force. To hear with genuine freedom and 
independence of judgment is essential to hearing with the 
highest spiritual profit. 

5. It would be a beautiful combination, with this spirit of 
candor and independence, to hear the teaching of the gospel 
with unfeigned reverence. It is the word and truth of God 
which is proclaimed. It is the reecho of that still low-toned 
voice which spoke from between the cherubic fires on the 
gate of the garden, and fell on the ears of the awed prophet, 
when midnight was on the gorges of Sinai, and the earth- 
quake and the fire had passed. Not only when the words 
of the sacred record are repeated, but when its truth are 
transferred into equivalent phraseology, it is still the voice 
of God. J^ay, more, when from the truths of the Word as 
premises, the laws of thought compel just and necessary infer- 
ences, it is still the voice of God speaking and determining 
what is true. When the conditions and laws impressed by 
the hand of the Creator compel to action, or guide and limit 
it, we know that such is his will. The law of life in the 
bird consigns him to the air, and the law of life in the fish 
compels him to energize in the water; and we are sure that 
it is in accord with the will of God. His will is expressed 
in his natural, as well as in his moral laws. The laws which 
he has impressed upon the human intellect are equally the 
expressions of his will; and whatever is truly determined 



110 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

by the just action of these laws, is as much a declaration 
of truth by God himself as in any other mode in which he 
has expressed it. We are compelled to recognize the relations 
of number, and know that, when justly combined, a certain 
sum must be developed. We know that fire will burn ; and 
the inference that it is dangerous to touch it is compulsory. 
We know that if Jehovah is God, we are bound to worship 
and obey him. This knowledge derived by inference from 
scripture premises is certified knowledge, because compelled 
by the laws of thought impressed by the hand of the Creator. 
Just exercise of human reason is not belittled by the institu- 
tions of Christ ; on the contrary, it is highly, yea, boundlessly 
honored. He says to all, "Hear and understand." Just and 
necessary inferences of human reason, certified by the laws 
of thought, and drawn from premises furnished by the Word 
of God, are raised to the rank of absolutely reliable truths. 
To listen, then, to expositions of the Word which are truly 
conformed to the sacred record, and to inferred results which 
are truly deduced from its statements, is to listen to the voice 
of God as truly as Moses did when he was watching the 
strange fire in the wilderness of Midian, which burned the 
bush, but did not consume it. As the awed shepherd took 
his shoes from his feet, in token of his awful sense of the 
majesty which was speaking to him, a similar spirit should 
mark our attendance on the service where the worship of the 
same awful Majesty is conducted, and the same truths are 
repeated in his name and by h'is command. This spirit will 
blend beautifully with that spirit of independent regard to 
his voice alone, which he himself has required. There is 
no inconsistency in being independent of all but God alone, 
and in being full of reverence for all which he declares. 
There is no incompatibility between this commanded inde- 
pendence of all other authority and the utmost veneration 



Uses of Holy Sceiptuee. Ill 

and reverence toward him who has ordered both to be ob- 
served in his worship. They are really only two sides of 
the same thing. 

6. Lastly, it is a matter of high practical importance that 
we should hear the preaching of the gospel with a fixed prac- 
tical purpose. All the teachings of the scriptures point to 
action ; it requires energy in faith and activity in duty. We 
should, therefore, both read and hear in order to learn what 
we should first believe and then do. We should look to the 
marching orders with a settled determination to do what is 
discovered to be the will and law of the Lord. The gospel of 
God is not a joke, or a mere amusement. It is not a mere 
temporal expedient, like a system of banking or secular educa- 
tion, no matter how useful or important it may be. It is a 
revelation from God concerning the eternal interests of a 
race of immortal beings which has revolted against the gov- 
ernment of their Creator and King. It tells them of their 
relations to God ; it points out their departures from his 
laws ; it shows their transcendant responsibilities ; it unveils 
all the terrible and pathetic incidents of their actual con- 
dition ; it unseals the grandeur of a future life ; above all, 
it makes known a way in which the fallen race may escape 
from the terrible emergencies of a fallen estate, and rise into 
the endless felicities of an eternal life. It marks out the 
terms and conditions of this wondrous transition. It tells who 
are involved in the mighty issues, and before every individual 
human soul raises the awful certainty of his own implication. 
It fixes the dread responsibility upon each conscience of deal- 
ing with these issues ; and, with a combination of tenderness, 
authority and pathetic remonstrance, calls every individual 
to instant and decisive action. Such is the scope and object 
of all gospel preaching. To this pointed and powerful, inces- 
sant and inexorable, personal demand for action, it is the 



112 Uses of Holy Scripture. 

duty and the wisdom of every individual to adjust himself. 
As the demand is for action, he must resolve to act. As 
many forms of action are required to meet the varied demands 
of the service of God, and as no substituted action is allowed 
by the divine law in any particular, it is indispensably neces- 
sary to wait on the means of instruction and encouragement 
which are appointed to make known what is to be done, and 
encourage the doing of it. The true spirit of the gospel hearer 
is the determination to learn — to hear and understand the 
Word and will of God — to learn in order to do. To attend 
the instructions of the sanctuary merely to be amused; to 
make the house of the Lord a sort of sacred dance-house ; to 
seek contact with the grand truths which God has revealed 
for the highest interests of dying sinners, merely to be tickled, 
is the lunatic excess of a godless and worldly spirit. Men 
should come to the sanctuary of God to learn, not to be enter- 
tained ; to worship, not to coddle themselves ; to seek for 
knowledge leading to repentance for their sins in dust and 
ashes ; to faith in the Saviour of sinners ; to the cleansing 
of the sanctifying Spirit; to readiness for death, judgment 
and a happy immortality. To gain these ends, something 
is to be done, as well as learned ; and the learning is chiefly 
important in order to guide and animate the doing. The 
true attitude of the gospel hearer is that of the eager deer- 
hound, straining on the leash, and eager to break into swift 
pursuit, when the horn of the huntsman sounds away. It is 
the attitude of the pale, resolute soldiers in the line of battle, 
waiting, with bent brows and iron lips, the order to advance 
into the deadly range of the guns. Go to the house of worship 
to learn; and learn in order to do. Ask yourself the ques- 
tion, when the subject is announced in the opening of the 
public lesson, "What is that to me ? What use can I put it 
to ? What does it call for at my hands ? Is it a warning ? 



Uses of Holy Scripture. 113 

Let me fix it in my memory ; let me establish it in my con- 
science; let me take heed to it from henceforth. Is it a 
message of consolation, or a promise of privilege ? Let me 
learn exactly what it is ; let me learn how to receive, how to 
use, and how to enjoy it. Is it a doctrine ? Let me try and 
understand it in itself, in its application, and in its value 
to me. Is it a duty ? Let me comprehend its meaning ; let 
me deepen my sense of its bond upon my conscience ; let me 
estimate its usefulness to others and its value to myself ; let 
me gather energy and strength to go and do it." 



THE NATURE OF SIN: 

In Itself and as Revealed in its Effects. 

"Oh ! do not this abominable thing that I hate." — Jeremiah xliv. 4. 
"Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sin- may be blotted 
out." — Acts iii. 19. 

1. ril HE indispensable requirement of repentance in order 
_A_ to salvation is clear on the very face of the record 
which contains the divine revelation to men. This require- 
ment necessarily develops a demand for just views of sin. 
Man must see something in it to repent of before he can do 
it; the possibility of repentance depends on it. The nature 
of the act, and the concurrent feelings of the repentance 
awakened, will depend absolutely upon the perception and 
judgment of the evil involved. Ealse views will result in a 
false repentance ; true views in a true repentance. Just con- 
ceptions of sin are indispensable to salvation. 

2. Another consideration leads to the same conclusion. 
Just views of sin are indispensable to a just view of the pen- 
alties of divine law; and without these no sinner will ever 
realize his need of a Saviour, or apply for his interposition, 
or humble himself before God. This is one of the dangerous 
errors of our day — insensibility to the justice of penal pro- 
visions in the public law, both human and divine, especially 
in the latter. If sin is not rightly judged, the penalties of 
law will seem to be the harsh expedients of mere power with- 
out right. The judgment formed of a violation of a law 
enforced by penalties recognized as intrinsically unjust may 



The ^atuee of Sijn t . 115 

lead to regret and lamentation for consequences ; but repent- 
ance for the breach of the law itself is impossible. 

3. The essential nature of sin is that it is something wrong. 
The English word wrong is derived from an old Saxon term, 
which means to wring or twist out of a natural or proper 
place. The notion is that of something out of place ; where 
it ought not to be. It implies the obligation of a law deciding 
where it ought to be ; and the dislocation implies a violation 
of law. The idea conveyed is the datum of an original 
intuition of the human soul. There are several of these fun- 
damental distinctions in things. There is a distinction in 
things which we call the beautiful or the ugly. The mind 
cognizes this by an original intuition in the sphere of taste. 
We distinguish the differences which exist in form and color 
by this power of intuition. There is also a distinction in 
things which we call true or false, as when we see that two 
and two make four, and do not make six. This distinction 
is cognized by a similar intuition in the sphere of intelligence. 
There is a distinction of good and evil — natural, as distin- 
guished from moral. By his relation to this distinction man 
is discriminated as a being of feeling, and capable of pleasure 
or pain. There is also a distinction in things, which is called 
right and wrong. This is the most important of all the dis- 
tinctions inhering in things, and is irresistibly cognized by 
the same original and intuitive energy of perception in the 
sphere of morals. As man stands related to the distinction 
of the beautiful, he is discriminated as a being of taste, 
and becomes capable of feeling the difference between the 
beautiful and the deformed. As he stands related to the 
distinction of the true and the false, he is discriminated as 
a being of intelligence and capable of knowledge; and the 
more perfectly the mind is capable of perceiving the, distinc- 
tion, the higher it is graded in intelligence. As he stands 



116 The Nattjee of Sin. 

related to the distinction of right and wrong, he is discrimi- 
nated as a moral being, and capable of virtue or criminality, 
the necessary object of praise or blame. This moral distinc- 
tion is not only resistlessly cognized as real and true; but 
it is also resistlessly recognized that the human mind is 
capable of impressing that distinction on its own actions and 
upon itself. Thus man is seen, not only to be capable of 
moral government, but that the very foundations of that gov- 
ernment are laid in the essential and indestructible principles 
of his own being. It is as absurd to deny man to be a being 
of intelligence, capable of perception and memory, and sub- 
ject to the laws of intelligence, as to deny him to be a moral 
being, capable of moral energies and moral impressions, and 
subject to the laws of morals. This fact of the inextinguish- 
able moral element in human nature is full of suggestions 
bearing upon all forms of speculative error, as well as of 
practical evil-doing ; but we cannot pause to trace them now. 

4. The order in which elements of the moral distinction 
are cognized by the intuitive faculty seems to be this : First, 
a perception of the distinction itself; second, a feeling of 
approval or disapproval, grounded upon the distinction; 
third, a sense of obligation created by it; fourth, a recogni- 
tion of future consequences to grow out of it as at once just 
and inevitable — just that the consequences of right should be 
different from the consequences of wrong ; just that the con- 
sequences of right should be fortunate, and that the conse- 
quences of wrong should be unfortunate ; and, fifth, a judg- 
ment of the actor, as well as of the act, as a person deserving 
or undeserving, just as he has done right or wrong. 

5. There being two distinct forms of evil involved in our 
intuitive judgment of wrong— one, the moral evil in the 
wrong itself, the other, the physical evil in the consequences 
justly and inevitably to grow out of it — it will follow that 



The Nature of Sin. 117 

the nature of the sorrow, anxiety, or repentance created by 
the evil perceived will be different, according as the one or 
the other of these two species of evil occupies the larger space 
in the view of the understanding. If the view is confined to 
the consequences, regret, remorse, and fear — all terminating 
on self — will be the result ; and a false repentance is the final 
issue. If, along with the view of the consequences, there is 
the clear apprehension of the moral evil of the wrong, then a 
sense of criminality and just condemnation, a feeling of 
shame and ingenuous sorrow is the result. The foundation 
of all these exercises is the apprehension that just obligation 
has been violated : the intuitive faculty has discerned that the 
moral distinction carries obligation; the right is felt to be 
authoritative. Obligation is only another name for law. 
The law of right, impressed upon the nature of man by the 
hand of the Creator, is nothing but another name for the law 
of God. Wrong, then, can be traced through the phenomena 
of nature, and the data of consciousness, to the same conclu- 
sion taught by the holy scriptures : wrong is the violation of 
the law of God. 

6. It settles, then, some conclusions of vast importance ; it 
settles the essential nature of the law of God as the law of 
right; right is always the expression of the law of God. It 
settles the authority of the law and the authority of God as 
always essentially and absolutely right. It marks the essen- 
tial nature of sin as intrinsic evil, and as involving necessarily 
a judgment of condemnation. It settles that the charac- 
teristic difference of sin is intrinsic opposition and antago- 
nism to the nature and will of God, for the nature and 
consequent will of God is absolute right — the perfect expres- 
sion of moral excellence. Crime is wrong considered as 
injurious to others; vice, as polluting and injurious to one's 
self; immorality and iniquity are general terms for lawless- 



118 The Nature of Sin. 

ness ; disregard for moral law in different degrees, and from 
different points of view. But they all fall under a higher 
generalization as sin, which contemplates wrong purely in 
its relation to God. To judge the nature of wrong as it relates 
to God, we must look to the intense and necessary antagonism 
between the nature of God and the nature of moral evil. To 
judge the nature of wrong as it relates to any responsible 
creature, we must look to the nature of the obligation that 
binds him. Without obligation the notion of wrong could 
not rise. Paul unequivocally teaches that where there is no 
law there is no transgression. The moral sense always con- 
demns according to the obligations which are seen to cover the 
case ; and the greater the obligation the greater the condem- 
nation. This obligation springs from the authoritative nature 
of right, which was impressed upon the soul by the finger of 
the Creator ; that is, it is the law of God. 

Now, to settle the question whether sin is, of its own 
nature, necessarily condemnable, we have only to look to the 
nature of the law — to apprehend it as essential right, and the 
essential expression of the nature of God; the intuitive 
power of moral perception, inhering in the very constitution 
of the human spirit, will instinctively pronounce upon its 
true character, and declare it to be essential wickedness. 
Men are often perplexed to understand why God is so much 
opposed to sin, and so firmly resolved to punish it. It gives 
him no pain ; it breaks no bones ; it exerts no physical effects 
on his personal well-being ; and they are perplexed to under- 
stand his uncompromising resistance and hostility to it. But 
the difficulty is explained, when we comprehend the essential 
and uncompromising antagonism between the nature of sin 
and the excellency of God. So far as sin is crime, an evil 
against others or injurious to ourselves, it is easy to see the 
evil that is in it. So far as it is vice — that is, polluting and 



The Nature of Sin. 119 

degrading to ourselves — it is easy to see it as blameworthy. 
To clear the difficulty a little more touching God's concern 
in it : Suppose that sin had no force in it to bring evil to our- 
selves ; suppose it only struck at God, set at naught his right- 
ful authority, disregarded his law, disabled all his creatures, 
capable of sinning, from working out the ends and purposes 
for which he made them, what would be the just and com- 
pulsory judgment upon the real nature of such an energy ? 
Unquestionably to condemn it as a wrong, as an injustice to 
God, as involving grave elements of wickedness ; it would 
pronounce the actor, who had done this evil thing, to be posi- 
tively guilty, in the sense of blameworthiness. Why is this ? 
Just because the human soul is so made as to inevitably 
condemn that which is condemnable in its own nature. To 
refuse to do it is a breach of a high obligation, the obligation 
to do justice. Such an evil as we have supposed is utterly 
opposed to the nature and will of God. What is the obligation 
which binds us to obey the will and conform ourselves to the 
nature of God ? The grand fundamental obligation to do 
justice, to render honor to whom honor is due, and tribute to 
whom tribute. Justice is binding of itself ; and it as much 
requires justice to be done to God as to any other being, and 
even more sacredly. The censurable nature of any breach of 
the law of God depends on three considerations : First, on 
the supreme personal excellence and the absolutely rightful 
authority of the lawgiver; second, on the excellence of the 
law itself, and, third, on the necessity of the law T itself to the 
good of the universe, including, of course, the good of the 
sinning actor himself. On each of these invincible grounds 
the right of God to give law to all moral and responsible 
creatures is surely founded. 

First, the supreme perfection of his personal nature binds 
to supreme regard and reverence, and any refusal to render 



120 The Nature of Sin - . 

it is intrinsic injustice and wrong. We feel bound to love 
excellence in proportion to its degree, and are stricken in 
conscience if we fail to do it. Second, God lias the authority 
to give law. This results from his sole prerogative to create. 
He has the right to say whether he will make any creature 
or not. He has the right to say what sort of a creature he will 
make, what purposes it shall serve, what functions it shall 
perform, and under what conditions it shall exist and act. 
This is to give law to the creature. Consequently, it is God's 
right to give law to the creature ; it is the necessary incident 
to his sole right and power to create. Authority differs from 
mere power to rule, inasmuch as it carries the notion of right 
with the notion of power. To resist mere power may be 
dangerous, but it may nevertheless be right. Authority cor- 
rupted or abused ceases to be authority; but to resist 
authority is to violate right and to do a wrong as well as a 
dangerous thing ; it is to invade and do injustice to the right 
of the lawgiver. It involves the rebel in positive guilt or 
worthiness of censure. A violation of the rights of another 
is instinctively condemned; and the sanctity of right is felt 
to rise in proportion to the greatness and goodness of the 
person whose rights are violated. Sin, then, as a violation 
of the riffht of God to rule is resistiblv seen to be condemnable 
in its own nature. God's right, growing out of his various 
and profound relations to his creatures, as Creator, Sovereign, 
portion of the soul, is violated by sin; but there is, 
secondly, an additional injustice done to God by sin. The 
intuitive power always recognizes an obligation to do justice 
to excellence, by esteeming it according to its degree, by 
conformity to its quality. The law of God is a transcript of 
his nature ; it is the impression struck by it as a type ; and 
the excellence of his nature, both in itself and in its expres- 
sion in the law, claims the true regard of the creature. His 



The Nature of Sin. 121 

claim on the regard the highest love of the creature is abso- 
lutely just. To refuse it is to do a wrong to him; and the 
degree of the wrong is in an exact proportion to the degree 
of his excellence. In the third place, the excellence of the 
law itself is one element of its binding force, and is essential 
to the imputation of blameworthy guilt for its violation. 
Violation of a bad law cannot carry with it a judgment of 
moral guilt. Unjust and unreasonable law may involve peril, 
but not guilt. But the violation of a good law carries both 
guilt and peril. Xow the excellence of the law of God is 
determined by the simple fact that it is the law of right — the 
embodiment of the eternal and intrinsic distinction of right 
impressed indelibly on the human spirit by the hand of the 
Creator. Whatever is of the nature of right is ipso facto, a 
part of the law of God. Hence the violation of right always 
induces a judgment of condemnation. It is the only judg- 
ment possible to be true to the fact in judgment. In the 
fourth place, the binding force of the divine law rests in part 
upon its indispensable necessity to the peace and order of the 
universe, and consequently to the happiness of the creature 
himself. The order of the whole creation depends upon the 
law ; and the transgressor, by his sin, not only does injustice 
to God, but brings ruin on himself. Here the consequences 
of sin come into view, and the argument from them to the 
nature of sin is twofold. First, the evil of the fruit discloses 
the evil nature of the energy from which they spring ; second, 
the deliberate hazard of such consequences involves again, 
and on distinct ground, the distinction of wrong, and the 
consequent necessary judgment of condemnation. 

The sum of the whole analysis of the nature of sin, as far 
as we have brought it, may be thus stated : Substantively, or 
in its essence, it is moral evil ; it is what we understand by 
wrong; it is a violation of intrinsic right, and necessarily 



122 The Nature of Sin. 

involves a judgment of condemnation. It makes the agent 
or doer of it necessarily criminal and criminally responsible. 
Formally it is against God — opposed to his very nature, in 
contempt of its authority, an injustice to his rights ; and, if 
not weak in his malignity, inconsistent with his very being. 
Beflexly considered in its effects, sin is against ourselves, and 
against the peace and order of the universe. 

From this analysis of sin two inferences of the gravest 
importance are inevitable : First, it is inevitable that God 
must condemn sin or sacrifice either his intelligence or his 
integrity; he must mistake its nature, or misrepresent its 
quality as essential evil. To do either is to undeify himself. 
Man is also bound to condemn it ; and it becomes clear that 
repentance is the paramount duty of every transgressor of the 
divine law. The responsibility of all men, and their need of 
some relief is apparent. 



THE EFFECTS OF SIN. 

"What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now 
ashamed? for the end of those things is death. For the wages of sin is 
death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our 
Lord."— Romans vi. 21, 23. 

WE have considered the nature of sin in itself ; let us 
now study its nature as revealed in its effects. The 
natural consequences and fruits of a thing are among the 
very best tests of its quality. It is indispensable to a just 
and complete cognition and judgment of sin, to see the true 
force — the real fruit-bearing energy which is in it, the native 
causative power of its intrinsic being or nature. These effects, 
if they can be shown to result, not from arbitrary legal pen- 
alties conventionally attached to sin, but from its own natural 
force, will not only strongly illustrate its own intrinsic evil, 
but will exhibit the ground on which the judicial condemna- 
tion of an individual judge may and must be based. 

1. Its first inevitable effect is to make the actor guiltv in a 
true criminal sense. Guilt involves two elements : one, the 
felt desert of penal retribution ensuing upon breach of law ; 
the other, an actual liability to penal pains. We restrict, for 
the present, attention to the first of these determinations, the 
sense of ill desert, The first act of the mind upon an act of 
wrong-doing reveals a feeling of personal criminality on the 
part of the actor. The action is a voluntary violation of 
recognized right, and the necessary judgment is a judgment 
of condemnation. The soul passes upon its own act, and 
condemns itself. It recognizes that a change has taken place 
in its own status, and sees that it has passed into an abiding 



124 The Effects of Si?s t . 

state of criminal responsibility. This is a fearful condition 
in which to be implicated. The sense of peace has given way 
to a sense of exposure, and to the feeling of being justly 
exposed. The sense of richly deserving to have evil allotted 
to the soul as its portion is positively unendurable. Exposure 
to evil, when it is felt not to be the result of one's own 
responsible conduct, can be borne with comparative fortitude ; 
but when recognized as the result of one's own act — still more, 
of one's own folly, still more, as the outcome of one's own 
positively criminal conduct — it cuts through all the nerves of 
mental energy, and the soul is utterly oppressed. The sense 
of ill-desert is a bitter pain, even if no ill consequences 
actually follow it at once. 

But the second element of guilt, liability to penalty, now 
reveals itself as one of the inevitable results of sin. The sense 
of deserving penalty is only a just decision upon the actuality 
of penal responsibility. Law is violated, and its penalty at 
once adheres. Penalty is of the essence of law; and justice 
requires the breach of the precept to be vindicated by the 
prompt assertion of the penal power of the law. The effect 
of sin is not to expose to a penal liability which may be 
possibly escaped, to a mere contingent hazard: the full lia- 
bility at once adheres to the transgressor. It may not be 
speedily executed; but the legal status of actual condemna- 
tion at once ensues as the inevitable effect of sin. How 
fearful is the thought! How fearful is the stern, pale light 
thrown on the legal status of all men ! They are construed, 
not as condemnable merely, but as already condemned ; and 
the sentence is taken as merely suspended by the mere good 
pleasure of the offended lawgiver ! How astonishing is man's 
insensibility under his sin ; he is asleep in the very grasp of 
the penal power of the law which he has broken ! 

2. A second necessarv effect of sin is that it pollutes the 



The Effects of Six. 125 

moral nature of the actor himself, with a stain as deadly as 
it is ineradicable. The reaction of sin on the moral nature 
of the transgressor is an inevitable law of the awful energy, 
which operates uniformly with each act of the wrong done. 
Each sin leaves its own injurious impress behind it. The 
first effect is on the nature of the agent; it is to destroy 
holiness, which is the vital principle of the spiritual life ; the 
soul dies spiritually at once and forever. The second effect 
is to subject the soul indefinitely to the operation of the law 
of reaction just explained. The ultimate result is absolutely 
awful to contemplate : endless and irretrievable moral degra- 
dation; a result prefigured, and partially illustrated in the 
words, "Utterly perish in his own corruption." 

3. A third necessary effect of sin is to bring the sinning 
actor under the punitive power of his own conscience. This 
faculty is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of human 
nature. It is a power of the mind which is capable of turning 
against itself: unbribable by self-love, ungovernable by the 
will, inextinguishable by the most strenuous efforts of hope or 
despair, it lashes the guilty soul with a lash of fire ! It yields 
to no plea, it concedes to no excuse; it pours its irresistible 
torrent of accusation and foreboding over the very self of 
which it is a part. Xo courage can face it ; no fortitude can 
bear it. Its fierce menace rings in the secret chambers of the 
soul the premonition and the earnest of coming doom. Skep- 
ticism would fain interpret the power of conscience as mere 
superstition, as the product of nothing but education. The 
notion is absurd ; conscience is a part of the nature of man. 
Skepticism itself cannot stand before it; the intuitions of 
real guilt will overwhelm all the bulwarks of infidel phil- 
osophy. Whatever else may be false, the power of conscience 
is true ; and it is madness to tamper with a principle so 
powerful and so uncompromising. 



126 The Effects of Sin. 

4. A fourth effect of sin is disorder, trouble in all the rela- 
tions of life, unhappiness and misery wherever it prevails, 
and in an adjustable proportion to the degree of violence in 
which sin is manifested. Sin is a natural source of trouble : 
vice always ends in grief; law always stands for peace, and 
the breach of law always ends in trouble and sorrow. 
Breaches of moral propriety always lie at the root of domestic 
trouble. Dishonesty and other individual sins bring sorrow 
to the individual. Civil government, law and the administra- 
tion of justice by public force, are all conditioned on the 
tendency of men to do wrong, and the resulting necessity of 
compelling them to do right. Not because civil government 
aims to qualify or reduce the moral evil in crime, but to 
restrain its outward expression. It thus testifies to the evil 
energy which is in it. Every institution of civil society, both 
in peace and war, is more or less directly conditioned on 
moral evil in society, or qualified by it. Disease, pain, and 
death, both physical and moral, are all clue to it. It digs 
every grave ; it heaves every groan ; it starts every tear. Its 
wages is death, a term which includes many evils besides that 
last grand mystery of final destruction to man's earthly exist- 
ence. Sin has turned loose all evil : pain is its natural issue ; 
death is its final consummation. 

5. Another striking effect of sin is found, not only in its 
disastrous domination over the present life, but in its plainly 
asserted dominion over the future. It always points to the 
front. It always hints significantly of evil to come ; "wrath 
to come" is the burden of its cry, even when it is filling the 
soul with pangs of pain at the present. It always hints at a 
retribution distinct from itself, and separable from the inci- 
dental suffering created by the anticipation. It points to a 
judicial sentence over and above mere natural consequence, 
vindicating that consequence, and affirming its justice and 



The Effects of Sin. 127 

completing its claims. Sin, and the exasperated conscience 
which it awakens, will evermore point its threatening finger 
to the front. This extraordinary phenomena, that the wrath 
which follows sin, as the sleuth hound tracks its prey, will 
not only surely come, but will always be to come ; it reveals, 
not only the certainty, but the endless succession, of penal 
pains. 

6. The analysis has hitherto proceeded on the mere consid- 
eration of the facts as revealed to observation. But now, 
bringing in the notion of a God, as the administrator of a 
positive moral government over responsible creatures, and 
another effect of sin is disclosed ; it inevitably secures the 
just displeasure of the King. His favor is life ; his anger is 
the sure guarantee of immeasurable mischief. God is just ; 
sin is essential evil, and God must judge it as it is. His 
judgment must be fitted to the fact before him; he cannot 
misrepresent it. He is holy; he must needs abhor all evil 
according to its kind ; moral evil is a shock to his purity ; 
physical evil is a strain upon his benevolence. He is in- 
finitely good ; he must abhor a principle which carries all 
manner of woe and sorrow in its womb. The anger of a 
perfect being is fearful ; it is the expression of his excellence 
upon essential evil, and is in proportion to the greatness of 
his perfection, and to the degree of malignity in the evil. A 
great crime will excite no strong feeling in the heart of a 
hardened criminal, while it will rouse the fierce wrath of a 
compassionate and just man. The anger of a good man is an 
awful, but a true expression of his goodness, dealing with 
wickedness. Sin, as an evil, necessarily arousing the anger 
of a being so perfect in every excellence as the infinitely just 
and benevolent God, must possess elements of abomination 
inexpressible in human words. 

7. Yet. another effect of sin is to secure beyond a per ad- 



128 The Effects of Sin. 

venture the condemnation of the sinning agent under the 
formal governmental acts of the divine government in its 
administration of justice. This result is an absolute cer- 
tainty; it is already an accomplished thing. Hell holds a 
mortgage, guaranteed by the truth and justice of Almighty 
God, on every transgressor of his laws. There is no escape. 
The Lord is in awful earnest in giving his law ; he approves 
all its claims, and he will honor its penalties, as well as its 
precepts ; he will honor its penalties as the only mode of 
supporting its precepts. The condemnation and punishment 
of every transgressor is made absolutely sure by the very 
nature of sin ; it must be condemned. 

8. It secures the loss of heaven. The holy scriptures reveal 
a state and condition of inconceivable blessedness in the 
future life as the certain home of all who comply with the 
terms of the divine favor. Refusal to comply with these 
terms is sin in its highest forms. [Nothing unclean can enter 
that region of serene and unspotted glory; holiness is the 
indispensable condition of a residence there. Holiness once 
lost is lost forever, so far as any restorative remedy in reach 
of the sinning actor is concerned. Heaven, then, is lost by 
sin ; and that by which so vast a privation is effected is thus 
revealed as an evil beyond all adequate conception. 

9. But its last effect, at once inevitable and intolerable to 
contemplate, is that it damns the soul. The loss is not merely 
negative, in the loss of heaven ; it is the positive incurrence 
of all the horrors of an eternal endurance of the penalties of 
the law. It issues in the penal fire, in the lake prepared for 
the devil and his angels, in the society of its own place, in 
the supremacy of despair, in a measureless descent down 
through all the possibilities of moral corruption, in the loss 
of all in which the well-being of an immortal being is con- 
ditioned — a loss absolute, complete, unendurable, and without 
end. 



The Effects of Sin. 129 

The inference from all this analysis of moral evil is simple, 
but resistless. A principle creating such results of its own 
inherent energy is an unadulterated evil, an evil too dreadful 
to be adequately comprehended or expressed. For a respon- 
sible being to impress such a principle upon his acts, and 
especially upon his own nature, which is the ever-flowing and 
inexhaustible fountain of his acts for all the future of his 
existence, is not merely folly; it is a wickedness absolutely 
sublime in its energy of evil. Sin, as it is now apprehended 
in this world, and by the darkened intuitions of the sin- 
blinded human understanding, seems to be a small and 
comparatively insignificant thing. But seen in its advanced 
stages, even in this world, it begins to show its immeasurable 
mischief ; but it can only be even approximately apprehended 
when it is seen in the full horror of its triumph over the 
myriads of lost immortals, in that scene of existence where 
all restraints upon its energy are removed, where crimes now 
inconceivable by human thought will be the ordinary traffic 
ef life, and where the stroke of retribution will fall as 
promptly and as sternly as the enormities that provoke it. 
Then, too, will be comprehended the grace of that glorious 
redemption which is now so fearfully misapprehended and 
abused. 



THE GUILT OF SIN. 

"That every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become 
guilty before God." — Romans iii. 19. 

IT now remains to discnss the nature and degree of man's 
guilt as a sinner; and afterwards the relative ideas of 
his responsibility; that is, the nature, degree, locality, and 
duration of the penalties of the law. Our object at present 
is to examine the component elements of that guilt which sin 
imputes to the sinning agent. 

From the analysis of sin we have seen that when law is 
violated, two forms of evil are involved : one, the wrong done ; 
the other, the danger incurred. The first arises from the 
violation of the precept ; the second is the consequence of the 
first, the just and necessary claim of the penalty of law. The 
actor incurs a personal status, suitable to both of these ele- 
ments of evil. This status is expressed by the term guilt, 
which has a two-fold meaning, adjusted to the twofold ele- 
ments of the sinner's status, one signifying desert of suffer- 
ing, the other liability to suffering. The two notions, although 
always comprehended in the unity of sin, are always separ- 
able in thought, and constitute two distinct and inconceivably 
important rules in dealing with the question of delivering the 
sinner, if such a thing is possible. The liability of sin is 
transferable ; the desert of evil consequence is not capable 
of transfer. The first of these contingencies makes an atone- 
ment for sin possible, the other makes repentance indispens- 
able. The one makes salvation to a sinner possible, the other 
makes that deliverance necessarily a result of grace, on the 



The Guilt of Six. 131 

part of God, and shuts out the possibility of salvation by the 
merit of the sinner's own works of obedience to the law. To 
clear and intensify the all-important view of the true nature 
of sin, let us study these elements of the guilt involved in it. 
1. Let us first take up the investigation of guilt as the 
desert of punishment. This is the feeling which always 
springs up when the element of criminality is discovered, 
whether in the acts or character of a moral and responsible 
being. It attaches instantly to the person who does a criminal 
thing. Just as we recognize a person as intelligent or not 
intelligent Avho is able to see or not see the distinction of true 
or false; just as we recognize a person of taste in one who 
can discern or create the distinction of beauty, just so we 
irresistibly judge him to be a criminal or blameworthy person 
whenever we discover the peculiar quality which we call 
wrong in the acts or disposition of the actor. The judgment 
of disapproval and condemnation is imperative and resistless ; 
it is the natural and necessary determination of the under- 
standing when contemplating the moral distinction which we 
call wrong. 

( 1 ) The analysis of this feeling of criminality implies, first, 
an obligation or law covering the case, laying down a rule to 
regulate the act. "Where there is no law there can be no 
transgression. 

(2) It implies freedom of action under this law. Com- 
pulsion to an act annihilates responsibility, and thus forestalls 
all sense of criminality, just in proportion to the degree of 
the compulsory force employed. Freedom of personal energy 
is essential to any true moral responsibility. The excuse of 
the sinner, so frequently made, that his act was the result of 
something different from his own causative energy, anni- 
hilates the sin if it is true. Real sin, an actual and just 
criminality, is, in its own nature, inexcusable; and if any 



132 The Guilt of Sin. 

act can be truly vindicated as excusable, it is, ex vi termini, 
not sin at all. 

(3) It implies the consent and concerted action of all those 
peculiarities of his nature which constitute him a moral and 
accountable being. These are, first, the rational intelligence 
to see the moral distinction of right or wrong which inheres 
in the action. Rational force is indispensable to moral 
responsibility. No idiot or wild beast is ever held morally 
responsible for acts of violence. True guilt always implies 
a sufficient degree of intelligence to understand the difference 
between right and wrong. Ignorance, when invincible and 
complete, extinguishes guilt and the sense of criminality; but 
wherever the sense of guilt is found, it demonstrates the 
existence of knowledge sufficient to establish responsibility. 
Another of the elements of nature involved in real guilt is 
the state of the heart, or the feelings and affections of the 
will indicated by the motive or design or object of the act. 
This is always considered a powerful element in modifying 
moral responsibility, because it reveals the status and true 
complexion of the voluntary powers as involved in the act. 
The feelings and affections regulate and determine action to 
a controlling degree. All responsible moral or personal action 
must be the product of man's voluntary powers. Another 
element is the positive volition, which is the last energy of the 
voluntary powers in the scale of will-acts leading up to action 
— the i^ositive volition or determined purpose to do the deed. 
Obligatory or just law, liberty of action under this law, or 
freedom from coercion in the course pursued, intelligence to 
perceive the moral distinction involved in the act, the real 
affections of the heart towards the thing to be done, are the 
principal elements which enter into the notion of criminality, 
and create the irresistible conception of desert of punishment. 

This feeling of blameworthiness, or the true desert of 



The Guilt of Sin. 133 

punishment attaches to a variety of the component elements 
which enter into the action taken. It attaches to the positive 
acts done, the open and unalterable expression of the energies 
employed. This is universally admitted. Some err in con- 
fining guilt only to actions, to the positive results of positive 
volitions ; but this is a mistake. Criminality is involved in 
some acts considered in themselves ; other acts become crimi- 
nal from their accidents ; that is, from the separable elements 
of motive, time, place, manner, and circumstance. Whatever 
may be the cause of the criminal character attached to the 
action, man always feels guilty in the sense of deserving to 
be condemned whenever he does an act marked as wrong. 

It attaches also to criminal or wrong motive, using motive 
in the sense of the intention or design with which the deed 
is done. Motive, in the sense defined, always strongly quali- 
fies the moral judgment formed of the action. Even when 
the action is indifferent, even when it is good, and, still more 
strikingly, even when the action is per se bad, its character 
is subject to qualification from the influence of motive. 
Motive profoundly colors all moral action, whether good or 
bad. 

It attaches also to those states of feeling which give force to 
motive in the sense of outward object or the inducement to 
action. The force of the outward object is effectively con- 
ditioned by the state of the affections of the heart, by the 
quality or character of the tastes and inclinations of the will. 
A bribe offered to an honorable man has no power to affect 
him; it is paralyzed by the high quality of his feeling and 
sense of duty and honor. Offered to a person of low moral 
tone, it is certain to carry his consent and regulate his con- 
duct. 

It attaches to the evil nature in himself of which the evil- 
doer becomes conscious when he reflects upon the evil thing 



134 The Guilt of Sin. 

which he has done. He sees that he himself is bad ; that a 
quality in himself has been disclosed by his act, which dis- 
criminates himself as being bad, as well as having done a bad 
thing. He not only recognizes the evil in the act, but recog- 
nizes the evil act as the disclosure of an evil energy in 
himself. An explosion of violent temper discovers a capa- 
bility of violent passions in the permanent character. Men 
always interpret character from acts ; they are manifestations 
of character, and often the greatest value of acts is found in 
this revelation of the abiding qualities of the man. Acts are 
the fruit of character, and consequently they are manifesta- 
tions and proofs of the abiding moral qualities of the man. 
The human understanding always instinctively applies the 
law of cause and effect in all such judgments, and invariably 
grades the condemnation more heavily as the act appears to 
be the outcome of fixed or permanent energies of the moral 
disposition, and not the mere sudden effect of surprise or 
violent temptation. Whatever speculative difficulties may 
arise on the abstract question of holding a man responsible 
for his own nature, there can be no question that the com- 
mon-sense judgments of the human mind do recognize the 
fixed qualities of a man's character as laying a necessary basis 
of a moral judgment of himself. The abiding moral traits 
of the disposition and character are not only allowable, but 
necessary elements entering into the formation of the moral 
judgment. The moral nature and permanent character of 
man is thus clearly discovered to be a legitimate ground for 
a moral judgment, and as such to be a legitimate object for 
a demand for repentance. All the expressions of penitent 
feeling recorded in the scriptures are strongly concerned 
with the state of the heart, and not merely with the acts of 
the conduct, or the words of the mouth. David, in the 
fifty-first Psalm, and Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, are 



The Guilt of Sin. 135 

profoundly penetrated by the sin in their souls. An evil 
heart is as clearly recognized by the common sense of man- 
kind, as it is by the Word of God, to be a necessary object 
for the emotions and acts of repentance. 

The moral judgment attaches the sense of criminality dis- 
tinctly to all moral energies, whether mere impulses, feelings, 
permanent affections, desires, determined volitions, or acts 
which are violations of the law, and as such are intrinsically 
against God. As we have already seen, this is the character- 
istic difference of sin; that is, the thing which marks all 
moral evil in its relation to God ; it is a something, a reality, 
an energy of personal will which is intrinsically opposed, 
hostile, instinct with resistance and fixed discrepancy towards 
God. Right, which is cognized as in itself an authoritative 
law, is merely a determination of God's essential nature, an 
impression struck by the essential attributes of God as the 
type of imprint ; sin is, therefore, in its own nature, essential 
opposition to the very nature of God. This fact develops 
another of its malignant energies : essential antagonism to 
the nature of God would alter or destroy that nature, if it 
could ; sin is, therefore, an energy which strikes at the very 
being and life of the immortal God. It would destroy him if 
it were possible. But, though weak in its malignity, it is 
none the less malignant on that account. Men always judge 
the true nature of a force by what it would do if it could, and 
not by its actual results as determined by opposing forces. 
If it were possible to assail the very existence of God, the 
world would soon be one vast camp, banded together for 
deliverance from the hazards which would spring from the 
government of a Being too holy to tolerate sin ; and the roar 
of artillery and the shouts of battle would reply sound for 
sound to the vollied thunder of Jehovah. Man had one 
chance at the life of the incarnate God, and we all know what 
was done on Calvary. 



136 The Guilt of Sin. 

All energies, whether of spiritual affection or outward 
action against the will of God, as expressed in his providence, 
or in his statute laws, involve the guilt of rebellion against 
his rightful authority to govern his own dominions. The 
moral laws of God rest on an intrinsic basis of essential 
obligation; his statute or positive laws rest on a basis of 
rightful authority ; his providential government and disposal 
of events rests on the basis of his supreme and unerring sov- 
ereignty. His will is consequently an absolute rule of con- 
formity, obedience, and submission to all his rational and 
accountable creatures. Any disregard of his rightful do- 
minion, whether expressed in statutory law, or in his provi- 
dential administration, necessarily involves guilt in the sense 
of blameworthiness, as well as in the sense of liability or 
danger, and is, therefore, a true object of censure and a true 
subject of repentance. 

Lastly, all the energies of the moral nature in man, whether 
of feeling, permanent affection, positive volition or outward 
act, which are concerned in resisting the grace and pardoning 
mercy of God, are recognized as peculiarly atrocious in the 
wickedness which they involve, and as such become a peculiar 
object of censurable guilt, and a peculiar subject of repent- 
ance. Unbelief, wjiich is a brief, comprehensive expression 
of this despite and rejection of grace, is disclosed to us as a 
sin of peculiar and incomprehensible malignity. 

2. Let us turn briefly to the second element of guilt, the 
liability to penalty involved in this just desert of it. This 
consequence is not only affirmed by the nature of justice, 
which, by the essential principles of his own nature, bind a 
just God to do justice to evil as it does to do justice to good, 
but is confirmed by the irresistible decision of the human 
conscience whenever it adjudicates a wrong. The desert of 
penalty is only another mode of saying, Justice demands 



The Guilt of Six. 137 

punishment ; and a demand of justice is omnipotent in its 
appeal to a righteous magistrate. This is confirmed by the 
second step in the order of proceeding of the adjudicating 
conscience, which always follows the condemnation of a 
wrong, by the affirmation of suitable consequences to result. 
There is at once a looking for of judgment and fiery indigna- 
tion. There is at once a gaze towards the future, an outlook 
for a coming retaliation, an eager listening for the long, stern 
bay of the pursuing ban-dogs. It is one of the broad blunders 
of modern speculation to make this doctrine of retribution 
for sin exclusively a datum of the Christian faith, and to 
consider it discredited whenever they judge the Christian 
faith to be discredited. But this is a fatal mistake; it is a 
datum of consciousness, which cannot be discredited ; it is a 
datum of nature, whose laws cannot be violated with im- 
punity ; it is a part of the mental constitution of man, and 
a part of the universal constitution of natural law, which can 
neither be denied or extinguished. Some of the ancients 
formulated this retributive energy of natural and moral law 
into a divinity and called it Nemesis. Nature always asserts 
it. Remorse would be an impossible emotion without it. 
Even on atheistic principles, the fact of this retaliation of 
violated law would not be discredited ; it would still remain 
an absolute and unalterable characteristic of the actual system 
of the universe. This retaliatory force of natural and moral 
law produces the indestructible conviction of responsibility 
which dominates every human soul. This retaliatory energy 
of law, and this sense of accountability, compel the recogni- 
tion of another truth, which is the necessary logical conse- 
quence. It affirms a power to which that responsibility is due. 
It implies the resistless conviction that justice will be done. 
Peace in crime is only possible as the result of forgetfulness, 
ignorance, or deliberate attempts to obscure the sense of 



188 The Guilt of Sin. 

responsibility, an obscuration which is and must be only 
temporary. The admission of an inextinguishable responsi- 
bility established in the system of nature, and in the very 
constitution of the human being, carries the idea of liability 
to penalty; for a responsibility which is never to be respon- 
sible is a contradiction in terms. The fact that only ignorance 
or deliberate resistance can obscure the sense of responsibility 
under the retaliation of natural law, irresistibly proves the 
reality of that responsibility. A thing which can only be 
hidden by ignorance or violence asserts itself in a way that 
admits of no compromise. But there is no obscuration of 
the consciousness of accountability for wrong-doing ; it is a 
datum of nature, which can no more be denied than the exist- 
ence of memory, or the feeling of reluctance to suffer pain. 
From all this analysis of human consciousness, and the laws 
of nature, the conclusion comes clearly into view, that the 
violator of right or the doer of wrong, whether in thought, 
word, or deed is truly and positively guilty; that is, he is 
both deserving of and liable to punishment under the law of 
God. ]NTo one can violate law with impunity, no matter what 
that law may be, whether it be the law which governs the 
physical, the mental or the moral nature in the human being, 
or whether it be any law which regulates the material universe 
at large. The violator of that grand moral law which is 
succinctly expressed in the distinction and notion of right — 
the most imperative and far-reaching of all laws — is justly 
condemnable; he is already condemned in every intelligent 
and just understanding, and the problem of delivering him 
from the complications into which his transgression of law 
has brought him is one which has taxed the wisdom as well as 
the grace of God himself. It is certain he is justly called to 
repent of his sin, the evil he has done. He is justly called 
to make good the mischief he had accomplished; and if he 



The Guilt of Sr^". 139 

is personally incapable of either of these healing processes, he 
is under an imperious necessity of finding a substitute who 
shall be able to rescue him, or to perish under the inexorable 
operation of violated law. As the notion of delivering him- 
self is wholly impracticable, it becomes clear that the inex- 
orable conditions of a sinner's standing under violated law 
is a Saviour who is mighty to save. 



THE PENALTIES OF SIN. 

"For the wages of sin is death." — Romans vi. 23. 

"Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and 
good." — Romans vii. 12. 

HAVING seen, in the irresistible data of consciousness, 
as well as in the declarations of the Word of God, that 
a sinning agent is at once deserving of punishment, and 
inevitably exposed to it, it becomes a matter of supreme con- 
cern to find out all that is discoverable touching the penalties 
of the law. Let lis turn, then, to a candid and thoughtful 
consideration of all the relative ideas of this solemn subject, 
and, in the light of reason and revealed truth, determine the 
nature, duration, locality, and degree of the penalties of the 
law. 

1. The question of the existence of a state of penal pain in 
the world to come is important beyond all others, no matter 
what theory may be adopted about it. If the affirmative be 
true, its bearing on the interests of mankind is too obvious 
to need illustration. If the doctrine is not true, the revolution 
Which would be created in all the relations of human society, 
in the influence and enforcement of human law, and in the 
securities of human life, would make the demonstration of 

These sermons were first written in the year 1851 ; rewritten and 
published as two articles in the Southern Presbyterian Review in 1852 
and 1853. They were afterwards again written in a form to be used in 
the pulpit at Raleigh, N. C, in 1876. The most complete and effective 
form of the discussion is in the Review articles : inasmuch as they are 
not likely to be seen in that form, and as it may be seen by some in the 
form of sermons, who may be benefited by it, I have ventured to offer the 
argument in this shape also. 



The Penalties of Sin. 141 

its falsity, a matter of boundless importance in the present 
life. 

It would seem to be reasonable that an idea of such trans- 
cendant importance would attract and maintain universal 
attention, and awaken the most cautious and profound in- 
quiry. But it is dangerous logic to reason from the proba- 
bilities of propriety to the actual development of human 
experience. Men shun the question with intense solicitude. 
The prejudice it excites is invincible. It contains the essence 
of every other prejudice against the revelation from God. 
Men would cheerfully admit every other doctrine of the Bible 
if that book denied the doctrine of penal responsibility. On 
the supposition that the Word of God teaches the modern 
theories of universal salvation, the intense and persistent 
opposition it has encountered would be the most mysterious 
of all mysteries. The persecutions of the church, and the 
flames of the martyrs, are alone sufficient to refute every 
defence of universalism bottomed on the Word of God. 

The sources of this prejudice are numerous and inexhaus- 
tible. It would only unduly protract the discussion to 
enumerate them all, but there is one of universal operation : 
this is the consciousness of guilt in every human breast. The 
universal dread of a future penal state is fully explained by 
the fact that every man feels that he is exposed, if the doctrine 
is true. Man is intuitively conscious of sin ; that sin deserves 
to be punished, and that under a just and intelligent adminis- 
tration of law it is probable that provision has been made for 
that purpose. This is the explanation of that universal 
shrinking from the grand conception of a true moral govern- 
ment over the world of mankind under the administration 
of a holy and just God. 

There are various minor sources of this prejudice, some 
of which we shall merely mention without extending a dis- 



142 The Penalties of Sin. 

cussion of them. Harrow and incompetent views of sin, and 
of the nature and sanctity of moral law, arising from the 
paralyzing influence of sin itself upon the moral intuitions 
of the soul, are sources of this prejudice of wide operation. 
If such a paralyzed condition of the moral perceptions is 
combined with a temper of peculiar amiability, or with a 
peculiar nervous sensibility to physical pain, it is apt to 
breed distrust of this awful truth. Certain vices, particularly 
sensual vices, have a powerful tendency to the same effect. 
High and luxurious living, excessive gayety and dissipation, 
tend to the same result. Certain forms of literature also 
breed it. The same principle underlies all these causes, and 
gives the evil influence to them all. Whatever tends to soften 
and effeminate the mind, and, at the same time, fails to 
clarify the moral and spiritual intuitions, will intensify resis- 
tance to the holy and inflexible law of Jehovah. Men of specu- 
lative turn, whose natural skepticism, or aversion to receive 
anything whatever except on evidence overbearing in its force, 
may happen to be strengthened by a vice or by a peculiar 
pride of intellect greatly exposed to the rejection of this 
doctrine. The modern literature of England and America, 
France and Germany, abounds in tinctures of this species of 
infidelity. Poetry shudders at the notion of a hell ; criticism 
openly hints at defect in the argument to prove it; social 
reform is indignant that the squalid objects of its active pity 
should be supposed to be liable to a worse perdition in the 
life to come; while the profound speculators in philosophy 
and moral science at once pronounce all such apprehensions to 
be superstitious and absurd. The reason of all this heretical 
tincture of modern thought is obvious enough. The pursuit 
of letters has a tendency to refine the intellect and the natural 
sensibilities, with no concurrent power to unseal the powers 
of spiritual perception blinded by sin ; consequently, they are 



The Penalties oe Six. 143 

keenly alive to the suffering endured, but are insensible to 
the evil which justly provoked it. Xo proportion can be seen 
between the offence and the penalty ; by consequence, a wide 
discrepancy is thought to exist between the perfections of 
the Deity and the judicial infliction of such intolerable 
severity. One of these contrasted notions must be rejected; 
the perfection of God is a necessary notion, and consequently 
the doctrine of penal retribution is summarily set aside. 

But this grand prejudice, no matter what its source may 
be, is hurtful, and ought to be controlled. ~No truth ought to 
be held merely on the tenure of a prejudice; the candor of 
the holder is necessarily more or less involved. Assuredly it 
is infinitely to our interest to know the truth on this awful 
subject. The innocence of error is a terrible delusion. There 
are many degrees of culpability in holding it, it is true ; there 
are many differences in the degrees of danger in different 
species of error. Some may err in comparatively small mat- 
ters, others may err in things which touch the very vitals of 
faith and hope; seme may be wilfully wrong; some may err 
by mistake or misguidance ; but in neither of these cases 
will the consequences of the error be prevented. A man may 
mistake arsenic for quinine, but the honesty of the blunder 
will not stay the effects of the poison. An honest delusion on 
this subject of penal retribution, which,, prevents all effort to 
escape the hazard, will not prevent it in point of fact, if all 
law is enforced by penal power. If the doctrine of penal pain 
is not true, it makes but little odds, so far as the future world 
is concerned, whether a man is deluded on the subject or not, 
or on what side of the question he is deluded. But if the 
doctrine is true, no language can describe the real value of a 
discovery which will reveal that truth, and explode the delu- 
sions under which so many human souls would be hopelessly 
subjected to its pains. 



144 The Penalties of Sin. 

We propose to examine the question thoroughly in a brief 
series of discussions, and begin outside of the Bible, with an 
inquiry into the most distant presumptions which bear upon 
the subject, intending to pursue the question through the 
various ascending grades of analogy, by which the decision is 
reduced to a moral certainty. But we would premise at the 
outset that this is a question of fact in its practical bearings, 
which is only capable of an absolute determination by the 
testimony of a competent witness from the scenes that lie 
beyond the present life. We may prove, for instance, that 
man is made miserable by causes inherent in his own moral 
nature, determining his own moral energies, and if no change 
is made in this all-important determining moral nature, he 
must continue to suffer as long as he continues to exist, But 
whether such a change will be wrought, is a question of fact, 
to be determined by reliable testimony ; that is, by the revela- 
tion of his will and purpose to effect such a change by the 
only being who can effect it. That will cannot be known until 
he discloses it; and thus the affirmation is made good, that 
the absolute determination of this question of retribution for 
sin can only be reached by a divine revelation. But while 
this is true, it is also true that there is an amount of signifi- 
cance in the presumptions and analogies created by the laws 
of nature, and the conditions of human character and human 
life in this world, which place the question in a position just 
short of absolute demonstration. Let us begin the study of 
these presumptions on the most distant view which the subject 
will allow. 

1. In the first place, the consciousness of every human 
being creates a presumption of very striking significance. If 
there is any one fact unsusceptible of dispute, it is that there 
is misery now existing in this world. This misery is uni- 
versal and constant. Now let us take the widest latitude of 



The Penalties of Sin. 145 

view ; let us extinguish the existence of a God ; let us admit 
the theories of atheism or pantheism. This admission does 
not disturb the fact that misery exists in the world, ^ow 
what is the presumption which arises in this position of the 
question ? Unquestionably that as we are unhappy now, we 
shall be so hereafter, in case our existence is continued, and 
the presumption, from our existence now, is that we shall 
exist then. Xor does the positive fact that we enjoy a certain 
degree of happiness now bar the inference. The facts do 
not conflict, nor do the presumptive inferences from the facts 
conflict. Combining the facts, and drawing a graduated 
inference from them, still gives us as the result a state of 
intermingled good and evil; it does not extinguish the ex- 
istence of misery, but still affirms it. Taking the sum of the 
facts, Ave are sternly forced back on the unquestionable pre- 
sumption of the reign of suffering in the world to come. But 
we are not permitted to amalgamate, because we cannot recon- 
cile the utterances of nature. Both facts are true, both stand 
erect in their places ; we are not perplexed to know what they 
say, but only to reconcile the substance of their statements. 
This only proves that the question is only susceptible of 
definite settlement by God himself. But the presumption 
from the existence now to the existence of suffering hereafter 
is undeniably true, and the sum of the whole calculation 
forces on us the menacing presumption of future wretched- 
ness to all who continue to live in the violation of law. 

But now let us advance a step, and introduce the notion of a 
personal God, the creator and governor of all things — a being 
endowed with the qualities which would make him competent 
to such a work. He must be supposed to be concerned in the 
career and conduct of his creatures. To deny this is to make 
him concerned to create, yet indifferent, whether his creature 

served the purpose of his creation or not. But such a suppo- 
10 



146 The Penalties of Sin. 

sition is contradictory and absurd. Any departure of the 
creature from his designed sphere of action must necessarily 
involve more or less of divine displeasure. Darkness and 
desolation must follow the refusal of the sun to shine, or the 
rain to fall, or the earth to clothe her bosom with grass or 
herbs. Introduce the notion of intelligence and a free causal 
will in the rebellious creature. The inference of the divine 
displeasure at a voluntary and designed departure of the 
creature from his appointed sphere of action will be power- 
fully strengthened. Now the presumption is very strong, that 
if God must feel displeasure, he may express it. No matter 
what may be the way in which he may do it, it is certain that 
if felt, it may be expressed. This expression of his disap- 
proval may be given in deeds as well as in words. Deeds 
expressive of divine disapproval of any or all violations of 
his will are penal ; and the discovery of any penal infliction 
takes the whole controversy from the ground of fact, and 
makes it a mere question of degree. The issue can no longer 
be whether there is any penalty for sin, but only how much 
punishment is just. 

But again, there is another presumption entirely distinct 
from the principles just discussed. This is the universal 
agreement in the creeds of all nations and all ages in the 
assertion and belief of this awful doctrine. It is not an idea 
which men willingly cherish ; and yet Jews, heathen, pagans 
of every type, Christians of every shade of difference, Mo- 
hammedans, deists, infidels of various schools, and even 
large sections of the universalist body itself, have affirmed the 
doctrine of some kind and some degree of punishment for 
sin, both in this life and in the life to come, Let it be remem- 
bered, the question at present touches the fact of penal respon- 
sibility, and not the question of the nature, duration, locality, 
or degree of the penal retribution. Now, how can this uni- 



The Penalties of Six. 147 

versal admission of a notion which all men would eagerly 
deny, if they could, be accounted for, except on the pre- 
sumption of its truth ? It is true, mere numbers do not prove 
the truth or falsehood of any doctrine. Allowing full force 
to this fact, it is also equally true that the more minds are 
engaged in an investigation, and are agreed in one uniform 
conclusion about it, the more likely it is that their conclusion 
will be correct. This presumption grows more powerful as 
you increase the numbers agreeing, and decrease the numbers 
dissenting, until, when we conceive an agreement so over- 
whelming, the presumption seems to mount up to the moral 
certainty of a view so universally taken by every diversity of 
age, nation, race, education, temperament, and fundamental 
differences on other subjects. The presumption is so power- 
ful as to leave this universal agreement unaccountable on the 

o 

supposition that the doctrine is not true. 

But again, there is another and distinct ground of pre- 
sumption upon this subject. That truth is more valuable 
than error is one of those plain dictates of both experience 
and intuitive perception which the most hardy skeptic would 
hesitate to question. The circumstances in which it would 
be even temporarily best to believe what is false are always 
transitory. Adherence to truth is not only right, but wise. 
Take this rule and apply it first to individual interests as 
implicated in this great question. We affirm that, even on 
the admission of the truth of universalism, the believer in 
the doctrine of future punishment has a solid advantage over 
the universalist. Allowing the truth of that fascinating, but 
dangerous theory, both are equally safe, while the rejector 
of the truth has a reversion in his favor in the event that the 
doctrine should be discredited. This is a real advantage. A 
military commander on going into action, counts it a capital 
advantage to have room for retreat, even though success in 



148 The Penalties of Sin. 

the struggle may never lead him to use it. This reasoning 
becomes more and more effective as you withdraw the admis- 
sion of the truth of universalism, and admit the possibility 
of the opposing theory, till, on the contingency of a real 
doubt, the advantage of the rejector of that theory becomes 
overwhelming. If universalism is true, both are equally safe ; 
if it is doubtful, the rejector is safest; and if it is false, the 
rejector alone is safe. The advantage, then, is decisively 
and permanently with the rejector of the truth, for we are 
arguing on the supposition that universalism. is true. The 
advantage is absolutely with the believer in the doctrine of a 
real penal responsibility on any supposition. Now conceding 
universalism to be true, when did it ever happen before that 
error was more valuable than truth, and that it was to the 
true and permanent interest of man to possess his mind with 
a lie ? The case is prodigiously strengthened when the prin- 
ciple of the superior value of truth to error is applied to 
society at large. No principle in the administration of civil 
government is more clearly established than the necessity of 
a higher power to give force to human law, and to restrain 
the excesses of human passions in the larger concerns of 
human life, and to make up the deficiencies of public laws, in 
controlling those private and personal impulses which public 
laws cannot reach. This relation of the government of God to 
civil government is not a mere interested appeal of the 
teachers of religion to civil prejudice to sustain themselves 
or their doctrines; it is a fixed maxim of statesmen and 
legislators. So completely was the necessity of a divine Being 
and a divine administration over human affairs demonstrated 
by the events of the first Trench Revolution that Robespierre, 
the great leader in that unparelleled tragedy, declared that 
if there were no God in fact, it would be necessary to invent 
one in order to make the laws effective. But the existence of 



The Penalties of Sin. 140 

God is only valuable to human government on the supposition 
that he is the punisher of crime; his existence would be a 
positive disadvantage on the contrary supposition. If God is 
construed as the indiscriminate rewarder of all grades of 
moral character and conduct, and bound by the essential 
qualities of his own nature to place all his creatures on the 
same footing of absolute well-being, regardless of their own 
moral deserts, earth would rival hell in the compass of one 
lunar month. 

Now admit universalism to be true, and what are the 
results ? We should have, first, the grand anomaly of a great 
truth incompatible with the existence of society, and the 
direct producing cause of crimes and calamities of unex- 
ampled bitterness and horror. Second, we should have the 
development of the extraordinary fact that a lie, the conscious 
denial of an admitted truth is more valuable than the truth 
admitted. Third, we should have the anomaly of a tremen- 
dous fraud necessary to the providential government of 
Almighty God. Fourth, we should have it necessary for the 
existence and peace of society to keep this grand, perilous 
truth out of sight, and to train the teachers of religion in all 
the arts of fraud, in order to maintain the delusions indis- 
pensable to the protection of all the rights and interests of 
associated life. 

The inference from all this process of reasoning is that 
there is presumptive truth in an idea so essential to the gov- 
ernment of providence, and to the interests of mankind, that 
there is no reason to believe error to be more valuable than 
truth on this subject than on any other, and that the pre- 
sumptive argument growing out of these facts amounts again 
to a moral certainty of the reality of penal pains in the 
administration of the universe. 

But this is not all; we now approach a series of strict 
analogies, the force of which rises higher than a mere pre- 



150 The Penalties of Sin. 

sumption. There can be no doubt that, so far as we can 
inspect the system of things in which we live, the violation 
of law is the invariable cause of disorder and suffering. It is 
true of the system in its minutest forms, as well as on its 
grandest scale of being. Penalty stands guard on every inch 
of the universe. It guards transgressions of all sorts; it 
threatens sins of omission as well as sins of commission. If 
man fails to provide food, shelter, and the means of improve- 
ment for the body or the mind, the results are unavoidable. 
The law of retaliation applies to physical nature, as well as 
to responsible man. Let man violate the laws of his material 
nature, pain and positive disease will assuredly follow. Let 
him omit to provide for his wants, suffering cannot be 
avoided. Let the agencies of nature rebel against the order 
ordained for them, confusion and loss are inevitable. Since 
then, penalty stands guard on every atom of the universe, the 
argument from the analogies of nature is as boundless as the 
universe itself, and the laws which govern every part of it. 
The grand matter of fact touching the penal responsibilities 
of violated law is determinable under three categories only: 
either man will be annihilated, and so made incapable of 
either pleasure or pain, or the nature of things must be so 
changed as to make violations of law productive of pleasure, 
and not of pain, which is absurd and impossible ; or else man 
must be kept from violating law, a deliverance which can 
only be anticipated under a view of the divine character, 
which is irrational and impossible. Sin must so change its 
nature as to excite other than sentiments of aversion in the 
infinite mind, which is equally absurd and impossible. 

Here, then, we stand, just outside of the Bible, with pre- 
sumption after presumption, and analogy after analogy, 
aligned upon one irresisitible conclusion, that the retaliation 
of violated law is certain. Let us now turn to the testimony 
of the revelation from heaven. 



THE PENALTIES OF SIN. 

"Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished." — 
Troveebs xi. 21. 

WE left the consideration of the subject under discus- 
sion as it was determined by the evidences of nature, 
outside of the Word of God ; we now enter upon the consider- 
ation of its testimony. Let us, first, look at the effect of that 
testimony upon the presumptions which we have seen to be 
created by more than one phase of actual experience, and the 
intuitive judgments of the human mind upon the working 
of the laws of nature. 

1. The first of these presumptions arose from the actual 
existence of misery in all the life and history of the human 
race in this world. If misery now reigns in one department 
of the universe, and during one segment of eternal duration, 
there is certainly no room for an inference from the general 
principles of the divine government or the attributes of God, 
denying the possibility of a similar state of things in another 
place and period of existence. The presumption assuredly is 
that like causes will produce like effects; and the testimony 
of the Word of God is perfectly clear that "he that sinneth 
shall have sorrow." The connection between sin and suffer- 
ing is affirmed by the Word of God to be essential and neces- 
sary ; the one is the natural fruit of the other, and no power 
can change it. Omnipotence itself cannot effect impossibili- 
ties. Whatever is capable of change is an object of power; 
Avhatever is not capable of change is an object of no power at 
all ; and sin, as an evil in its own nature, cannot be made the 



152 The Penalties of Sin. 

source of anything but evil. Consequently, when the future 
existence of man is presumed, the presumption of his misery 
follows the presumption of his existence unless he can be 
stopped from sinning. The Bible makes this presumption a 
certainty : "as the tree falls, so it must lie forever" is its clear 
announcement. It teaches that the issues of the future life 
are determined in the present, and the presumption of future 
misery to man from the wretchedness of the present swells 
into a clear and resonant conclusion, plainly and positively 
affirmed of all who violate law, and die without repentance. 

2. The second presumption arose from the intuitive per- 
ception, that the Creator must be concerned in the conduct 
and career of the creature, especially of any intelligent and 
moral creature. To deny this is to make God equally indif- 
ferent to the success or failure of his own arrangements, 
which is absurd. The conclusion is resistless, from the 
premise, that he is concerned in the actions of the creature; 
that whenever the creature violates the order determined by 
the divine will, that God will be displeased, and his dis- 
pleasure is a nullity unless it is expressed. The expression of 
the divine displeasure for violations of the moral laws or- 
dained for the regulation of moral and responsible agents is 
what is meant by judicial or penal judgments. 

The Bible not only confirms this presumption, but restates 
it in far stronger and broader terms. It does this, not only 
by affirming that the divine being is concerned about the 
conduct of the creature, but by affirming that this concern is 
far deeper and more intense, and employed about more and 
minuter acts, than the natural reason had ever supposed. So 
far as mere natural objects are concerned, his interest and 
regard extend even to the fall of a sparrow. So far as 
responsible moral agents are concerned, it extends to the full 
decree of his regard for intrinsic righteousness, for his 



The Penalties of Sin. 153 

authority as a sovereign, for the honor of his law, and for his 
own personal character as involved in the character of his 
legislation. To select only the last of these specifications for 
illustration : When a man violates the law of God in any 
particular restraint, his conduct implies that the law 
restrained him from what it was good for him to enjoy, and 
thus attacks its benevolence. He implies that the law mistook 
what was best for him, and thus impeaches its wisdom. He 
implies that this unwise and unkind interference with his 
interest is unjust, and thus impeaches its justice. Sin attacks 
the propriety of the whole law. In doing this, it goes farther, 
and attacks the character of the lawgiver; the character of 
every legislator is necessarily involved in his legislation. By 
the breach of his law, not only is his personal honor im- 
peached, but his authority is despised ; and when the Bible 
teaches that God's concern in the responsible activities of a 
human being involves all these grand elements of both his 
personal and official character, and is measured by his regard 
to them, it carries the presumption of the intuitive judgments 
of natural reason to the highest possible degree, and makes 
the inference touching the penal expression of his displeasure 
absolutely resistless. 

3. The doctrine of the Bible upon the invariable, immediate 
or ultimate sequence of suffering upon sin, teaches plainly 
the doctrine of penal pains in the world to come. The history 
of mankind shows clearly this sequence here in this world, as 
we have seen. The presumption is that as sin produces 
misery in this world, it will continue to produce it in the 
world to come. If any stop can be put to sin, then its fatal 
power may be broken ; if no arrest can be placed upon it, the 
conclusion is clear : man will continue to suffer as long as he 
continues to sin. This presumption also points, with fearful 
significance to the duration, as well as to the existence, of 



154 The Penalties of Sin. 

future misery ; it settles the rule that as long as man sins, he 
will continue to suffer. The doctrine of the Bible adds 
prodigiously to the force of this presumption. It not only 
affirms the invariable sequence of suffering upon sin to be 
naturally inevitable, but morally just. It affirms the proper 
penal nature of the connection. It declares that the essential 
link between violation of law and its painful results has been 
ordained in the nature of things, because a moral propriety 
demanded such an ordination, or, more properly, that the 
very nature of moral quality necessarily determines that con- 
nection. It affirms that even where suffering falls upon those 
who are incapable of overt acts of moral evil, it is still the 
result of penal liability, and proceeds to vindicate the prin- 
ciple upon which that legal liability results. It also explains 
the nature and relations of disciplinary suffering to penal 
pain, and clearly teaches that disciplinary suffering is merely 
an adjunct of a penal suffering proper ; or, in other words, 
that unless penal pains were deserved, disciplinary suffering 
would be impossible. But, above all, it asserts over and over 
again the truly penal nature of the retributions of the law. 
Punishment is pain inflicted simply because it is just; it is 
pain holding a definite relation to criminal action ; it is pain 
inflicted as a judicial determination upon the violation of law. 
The very term punishment shows that the pain is really 
punitive, and not disciplinary; its object is to do justice on 
the criminal, and not to secure his benefit. ~No human gov- 
ernment executes a criminal sentence for the disciplinary 
benefit of the criminal actor; it does it because justice 
requires it of the criminal, and is necessary for the protection 
of society. "I will punish you according to the fruit of your 
doings, saith the Lord. They shall bear the punishment of 
their iniquity. He shall have punishment, in whom is sin." 
These are samples of the testimony of the Bible. They 



The Penalties of Sin. 155 

confirm the intuitive judgment of the human soul that wrong- 
doing, not only will, but ought to, bring evil consequences on 
the wrong-doer ; that he deserves it, and that justice will not 
be clone unless he is made to suffer. Such is the confirmation 
and enhancement lent by the holy scriptures to the presump- 
tive inference of human reason from the sequence of suffering 
upon sin. It confirms the inference by demonstrating that 
the connection between sin and suffering is moral, essential, 
and unchangeable ; that it is fundamentally just and right- 
eous, and as such it will be maintained eternally by a just 
administration of the divine government and law. 

-L. But the Bible influences the decision of this great ques- 
tion, to a decisive degree, by another and a distinct species of 
evidence. The unhappiness of man is occasioned, to an im- 
mense degree, by his own depraved and ungovernable pas- 
sions : the sin in his nature exerts its natural influence, 
determines his active career in criminal actions, and invari- 
ably results in unhappiness to a greater or less degree. This 
cause of suffering, being attached to his own being, and a 
controlling comrjexion of it must be removed or it will secure 
his wretchedness in every theatre of his existence, in the 
future as it has done in the present life. Some radical change 
must be wrought in the very nature of man before he can be 
happy anywhere. This change the grace of God offers to 
effect in this world by the truth revealed in the gospel, and 
by the regenerating influences of the Holy Spirit; but the 
determination of this change is distinctly suspended upon 
the acceptance or rejection of the offered mercy in the present 
life. Death settles the question; the indispensable change 
will not be wrought after that mystery is accomplished, and 
the soul which crosses the mystic line, into the bourne beyond, 
unrenewed, will be left hopeless of deliverance from the 
devouring energy of its own innate and acquired depravity. 



156 The Penalties of Sin. 

That changeless subjection to the dominion of moral evil 
guarantees the unhappiness of the sinning actor for the full 
term of his existence; his misery will not only extend into 
the future life, but it will endure to the period of his being 
as an immortal creature. 

5. The Bible doctrine of sin essentially implies the doctrine 
of a future punishment. The theories of universalism are the 
outcome of defective views of moral evil. Without just 
intuitions of sin, as a matter of course, no proportion can be 
discerned between the offence and the penalty. But when the 
true nature of the offence is discovered, all the insurrections 
of a rebellious moral judgment are subdued, and the soul 
reposes on the conviction that, awful as the retaliation of 
broken law may be, it is just. The intrinsic evil of sin is a 
mystery to the natural mind, because its intuitions have been 
darkened and disturbed by the very evil which it seeks to 
understand. But the mischief has been diagnosed for us by 
the infinite and unerring wisdom of God, who alone can fully 
comprehend it. The Bible pronounces it an evil absolutely 
infinite. The exposition of its malignity, and the righteous 
punishment of its guilt, seems to be one of the grand objects 
of the universe, and the divine administration over it. To 
assist in forming just conceptions on the subject, let us sup- 
pose that sin is not the malignant energy it is said to be. But 
now suppose there is an energy, of an incalculable power of 
evil, an insult to God, an injury to man, a disturbance to the 
whole universe, incompatible with peace and order every- 
where, and, if left without restraint, deadly to the govern- 
ment, nay, to the very life, of God; the natural fountain of 
all manner of pollution, shame, and misery. Now let the 
common-sense, moral intuitions of any fair mind say whether 
such an evil ought to be condemned or not ? If it is just to 
condemn and oppose, to the very uttermost, such an evil as 



The Penalties of Sin. 157 

this which we have supposed, then the question before us is 
settled ; for sin, moral evil — the breach and despite of eternal 
right — is just such an evil. If it is not just to condemn such 
an evil, then the absurdity is developed, that it is not just to 
condemn that which possesses every element of evil, every 
quality on which the notion of condemnation can arise in the 
mind. It is to say that it is not just to form a judgment 
which is rigorously true to the exact nature of the thing in 
judgment. It is to say that is not just which is just, exactly 
ad justed to the thing judged ; which is contradictory and 
absurd. 

Xow we advance a step farther. If sin deserves condemna- 
tion at all, it deserves it to the extent and degree of the evil 
which is in it. The intrinsic demerit of sin is the measure 
of the justice in its condemnation. How do we obtain a just 
conception of the demerit of sin ( As sin is the violation of 
law, either by omission or commission, its demerit must be 
ascertained by estimating the obligation to obey it. Obliga- 
tion is the necessary basis of merit or demerit ; without law 
there is no transgression. What, then, is the obligation of 
moral law ? The answer is legitimately sufficient to say the 
very nature of moral quality carries obligation; right is 
intuitively felt to be binding on every moral being. The sum 
of the law is love. We feel bound to love excellence, and that, 
too, in a formal proportion to the degree of it. We feel 
bound to love a good man ; more bound to love and esteem 
a better man, and most bound to love where most moral excel- 
lence is displayed. We are bound to love God on account of 
his excellence ; his excellence is infinite in degree ; the obli- 
gation to love him is infinite in force ; and the breach of 
infinite obligation involves infinite demerit. If punishment 
is the answer of justice to demerit, it is clear' that the infinite 
punishment of sin is capable of the strictest logical proof and 
expression. 



158 The Penalties of S 



IK". 



6. Yet once more. The Bible doctrine touching the nature 
of justice involves the doctrine of future punishment. 
"Truth/ 7 says Milton, "is but justice in our knowledge, and 
justice is but truth in our practice." This is only to say, 
justice absolutely requires that a judgment of a thing must 
be truly fitted to the thing judged ; a circle must be judged 
to be a circle, and a square to be a square. The judgment 
must be based on the thing judged ; it must be conformed to 
the fact in the case. Any failure to do this can only spring 
from a want of discernment or a want of integrity. The 
character of the judge is involved in one or the other of the 
horns of this dilema, when the judgment is not conformed to 
the facts in the case. The notion that God can let the sinner 
off from a judgment of condemnation, if he was only pleased 
to do so, is utterly false ; his integrity binds him to a judg- 
ment of condemnation, if the thing in judgment is in itself 
evil and per se condemnable. If sin, then, is intrinsic evil, 
and as worthy of condemnation, God is bound by his own 
essential attributes to punish it. If it deserves to be punished 
by suffering, he must inflict it, or be unjust. E"o assurance 
could be higher that no transgressor will escape an atom of 
his just responsibility. Though hand join in hand, the 
wicked shall not be unpunished. 

7. The Bible doctrine concerning the unequal allotments 
of this life also involves the doctrine of future punishment. 
The prosperity of the wicked, and the trials of the just, so 
often seen in the present perplexing system of existence, have 
proved a puzzle to the thinking minds of every age. The 
irresistible intuitions of the soul rebel against the justice of 
these allotments. There is an ungovernable flash of intuitive 
perception which rips through all the mists and mazes of 
skeptical metaphysics, and proclaims it as the deepest and 
most imperative judgment of the human soul, that criminal 



The Penalties of Sin. 159 

evils ought to be punished, and virtue to be rewarded. The 
theory of the universalist itself admits this, whenever the 
exigencies of controversy forces him to show that the wicked 
do actually suffer more in this life. This admission involves 
the further admission that it is just they should suffer more ; 
and this admission involves logically the whole doctrine of 
retribution for sin : it allows there is something in wickedness 
which deserves more suffering than well-doing deserves ; and 
thus admits moral quality to be a just basis for a penal 
discrimination. !Now, if justice is not done in this world, 
either to the righteous or the wicked, it must be done in the 
world to come, or remain undone forever. The Bible teaches 
it will be done to both classes, and this involves the doctrine 
of both reward and punishment in the life to come. 

8. The testimony of the Bible takes another and distinct 
shape. All its principles involve the truth of the doctrine of 
penal liability for sin. The Bible doctrine of the divine 
government implies the existence and obligation of law ; and 
law necessarily involves the notion of penalty. Without 
penalty, law ceases to be law, and becomes nothing but advice ; 
it ceases to be coercive, and thus ceases to be law. The 
break-down of law is the dissolution of government altogether. 
The doctrines of repentance, atonement, human depravity, 
and regeneration, all imply sin; sin implies law, and law 
implies penalty. The whole scheme of salvation implies a 
danger from which deliverance is sought; it is an absurdity, 
on the contrary supposition. The whole work of redemption 
by Christ was absolutely without a purpose, if all the evil to 
which man is exposed actually exhausts itself upon him, and 
expires by its own limitation, for such a supposition leaves 
Christ without a function. The doctrine of future punish- 
ment underlies the whole system of Christianity, and the 
rejection of the one logically involves the overthrow of the 
other. 



160 The Penalties of Sin. 

9. But the Bihle testimony assumes yet another striking 
form. It is found in the perpetual contrast which it draws 
between the righteous and the wicked in a hundred points. 
ISTow, the contrast is between the moral character of the two, 
and the beafing of the difference on the peace and tranquility 
of the parties, and on the esteem felt for them during the 
present life. Then it is emphasized on the personal happi- 
ness, on the bodily health, on the worldly prosperity, and on 
the conduct and comfort of the two classes in affliction, clan- 
ger, or death. In all these matters, the contrast is rigidly 
grounded on the differences in the moral character, and the 
moral conduct of the parties. This universal antithesis be- 
tween the righteous and the wicked, in all the consequences 
of the distinction between them, points to the essential char- 
acter of the distinction, and this absolute essentiality carries 
with it the perpetual nature, and the eternal operation of the 
distinction. If it is so essential, it must go over into the 
world to come, and display its peculiar energies for all 
eternity. The Bible confirms the inference in its pictures of 
the judgment day. The parties are placed on opposite sides 
of the Judge's throne; a different sentence is pronounced 
upon them; the execution of the sentence is made fearfully 
different ; and the whole is made to turn upon the differences, 
the awfully fruitful and intrinsic differences in moral char- 
acter and conduct of the classes judged. Some defenders of 
the theories of universalism endeavor to confine this judgment 
to the present life; but the sentence is after death; the 
judgment is after the present life is closed; and the whole 
process reveals clearly that the grand distinction is carried 
over into the future state and established as eternal. 

10. Once more. The Bible settles the question by giving a 
local habitation and a name to hell This fact is sought to 
be evaded by showing that the Hebrew word rendered hell is 



The Penalties of Sin. 161 

sometimes used to mean the grave. This is admitted; but 
it is not admitted that it never means anything else. Such 
an interpretation would make nonsense of many passages of 
scripture. A single statement of fact, however, settles the 
question: it is after death, and after the resurrection from 
the grave, that the sentence of the Judge drives the wicked 
from the left hand of the throne into the everlasting fire, 
prepared for the devil and his angels, and leads the righteous 
from the right hand of the throne into the paradise of God. 
An assertion so plain and positive will and ought to settle the 
question with all candid believers in the Word of God. 

11. Finally, we condense all the remaining features of the 
testimony of the scriptures into the statement that the sacred 
writings are full of warnings and expostulations — relative 
ideas of penal perils ; they give examples of the pains of hell ; 
they describe dimly the nature, and more clearly the duration 
of penal pains ; and they make one plain and positive asser- 
tion of the fact after another, until it becomes absolutely 
inexplicable how any one can doubt the doctrine of the Word 
of God on the subject. It gives us the cry of the rich man to 
Lazarus and Abraham. It paints the lake of fire, and the 
damned cherubim on its rolling billows. It affirms "the 
wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment," None 
need doubt who is willing to believe a disagreeable and men- 
acing truth. Let us be warned. The finger of God, in nature 
as well as in the Bible, has written his testimony in characters 
of menacing splendor, more appalling by a thousand-fold 
than the dazzling sentence which glowed over the banquet of 
the Babylonian monarch on the night when justice made 
inquiry for his crimes. Let us hearken to the warning of the 
ancient seer, who saw the wicked "turned into hell, with all 
the nations who forget God." 



11 



THE NECESSITY OF REPENT- 
ANCE. 

"I tell you, Nay : but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." — 
Luke xiii. 5. 

HAVING considered, in previous discussions, the two 
great features of sin, first, as an intrinsic evil, and, 
second, as a natural fountain of disorder, pain, and pollution, 
involving the twofold element of guilt, as the desert and the 
liability of condemnation, two other related subjects of 
supreme importance come forward and demand our attention. 
Both are involved in the question, whether it is possible for 
the sinning actor to escape from the power and peril of his 
sin. The answer to this question is due only to the wisdom 
and grace of God, and constitutes the whole essence of what 
is known as the gospel of Jesus Christ. ~No angel could 
answer it. The affirmative seemed to involve insoluble diffi- 
culties, even contradictions. God was absolutely just, sin 
was absolutely evil, the transgressor was absolutely guilty, 
and God was bound by his own integrity to condemn both 
the evil and the doer of it. How, then, could he pardon? 
His holiness, justice, and truth seemed to bar the way to 
peace and safety to the offender, with a trio of flaming 
swords, to whose awful menace the whirling sword-fires of the 
cherubim on the gate of deserted Eden lost all menacing 
power. God's wisdom alone could solve the question how 
mercy and truth could meet together; how righteousness in 
God and peace for sinning man could kiss each other. The 
solution, when made, was found to lie in the double nature of 



The Necessity of Repentance. 163 

guilt, resulting from the twofold evil in sin. Guilt, as per- 
sonal desert of condemnation, was incapable of change; it 
must remain forever attached to the person of the trans- 
gressor; but guilt, as liability to penal pain, was revealed 
in the discovery of the divine wisdom as capable of transfer, 
though not capable of absolute impunity. The wondrous 
conception of substitution and legal representation is de- 
veloped in the grand doctrine of atonement; and the possi- 
bility of salvation to a sinner turns upon the obedience and 
suffering of the Son of God, the great High Priest of our 
profession, as the substitute of the transgressor. In this 
wonderful expedient, the regular action of the law is not 
interfered with; it is allowed its full claim in both precept 
and penalty. The sinner is saved by being moved out of the 
line in which penal justice seeks its righteous vindication, and 
Christ steps into his place, and pays the debt for him. The 
executor of the estate pays the full value of the bond, and is 
then free to give up the cancelled bond to the rescued debtor. 
The liability of human guilt is laid upon him, and is taken 
wholly away by his atoning sacrifice offered in the sinner's 
place. Thus salvation for a sinner becomes a joyous reality, 
by the wonderful grace of his representative substitute dying 
in his place. The full development of the principle, and 
result of this scheme of divine compassion, belongs to the 
doctrine of atonement. The liability element of human guilt 
being capable of transfer to a representative substitute makes 
atonement for sin possible, and by consequence salvation to a 
sinner. But the moral and personal desert element of human 
guilt, being unchangeably attached to the person of the trans- 
gressor, must be encountered by another expedient, and makes 
personal repentance, on the part of the offender, absolutely 
and permanently indispensable, at least for the whole period 
of his earthly life, and until finally and fully saved from 



164 The Necessity of Kepentakce. 

the inward stain of personal depravity, into the kingdom of 
final glory. This doctrine of repentance is the subject of our 
investigation at this time, confining attention at present to 
one single point — the necessity of repentance to the salvation 
of a sinner. The forgiveness of sin removes the liability to 
penalty, and qualifies the legal relations of the individual; 
but exerts no direct personal effect on his moral nature. His 
personal nature, which has been corrupted, and the personal 
criminality of his previous conduct, remain to be qualified. 
His personal attitude towards these elements of his responsi- 
bility must be altered. He has loved his sin, he has delighted 
in the indulgence of his unholy impulses, he has disliked the 
law which rebuked his self-indulgence. The course of con- 
duct, which has been determined by these unholy and self- 
gratifying motions of his corrupt nature, has developed 
criminality in his whole career. He is rightfully required 
to alter his whole attitude towards these criminal elements,, 
both in his heart and in his life. The past cannot be changed ; 
past facts have escaped from the sphere of power ; even the 
almightiness of God cannot obliterate a past fact. The only 
thing connected with past sin, except the liability just spoken 
of, which is capable of change is the attitude of the sinner 
towards the indelible facts in his history. This can be 
changed ; this ought to be changed ; this is indispensable to 
be changed under the revealed scheme of delivering grace. 
Such a change is what is meant by repentance, or, in other 
words, repentance is a necessary part of salvation to a sinful 
soul. It is not only necessary to introduce the outset of a 
Christian career, but, inasmuch as the struggle with sin will 
continue all through the natural life of the pilgrim of grace, 
the necessity of repentance will never cease until the strife 
with the law of sin in the members is over. The final full 
sanctification of the redeemed soul will put a period at last to 



The Necessity of Repentance. 165 

an j fresh demands for repentance, by putting a stop to all 
sinning. But, even amid the unstained blessedness of heaven, 
it is likely that the sense of un worthiness to have had such a 
redemption granted will never depart from his thoughts, and 
will give an intense reality to his ascription of praise to the 
Lamb of God, who redeemed him by his blood, and purified 
him by his grace. 

1. The necessity of repentance on the part of the transgres- 
sor is not modified at all by the consideration whether his 
repentance will qualify the question of his deliverance or not. 
He is morally bound to repent, no matter whether repentance 
will aid his escape or not ; he is bound to repent in any event. 
He is necessitated to repent on the supposition of his salva- 
tion. Salvation in sin is a contradiction in terms. Repent- 
ance is at once a moral and an intrinsic necessity in the 
salvation of a sinning being. The moral obligation to repent- 
ance results from the essential proprieties of the case. Sin is 
an evil; it is an intrinsic wrong; it is in its very nature a 
criminal thing; and essential justice requires it to be con- 
demned. Essential justice as much requires the sinner him- 
self to condemn his own evil-doing as it requires any one else 
to condemn it. To refuse to condemn and dissapprove an 
admitted wrong is to endorse and confirm it. Such a refusal 
is at once recognized, by the moral intuition of the human 
soul, to be a gross impropriety, to be an essential injustice, to 
be a vivid aggravation of the original wrong, a fresh act of 
transgression on the law of right. Every human heart in- 
stinctively affirms it to be right to repudiate wrong. To 
refuse appears to be a deliberate reenactment of the evil done ; 
it is a conscious endorsement of it. To refuse to repent is to 
reaffirm and stand by the evil act. Such an endorsement is 
resistlessly condemned in the court of conscience. This is 
the first reason why repentance is indispensable to the salva- 



166 The Necessity of Repentance. 

tion of every transgressor of the divine law. The moral 
consciousness of the human soul dictates repentance as essen- 
tial justice to the ill-desert of sin as the immediate and 
inevitable requirement of right when a wrong is committed. 
This judgment is altogether irrespective of any prospect of 
relief, or any idea that such relief is either logically or 
morally connected with this repudiation of his criminal act 
by the agent himself. ISTo human tribunal accepts the repent- 
ance of a criminal as in itself entitling him to release from 
the penalties of the law. His repentance is judged to be 
simply justice to the act on the part of the transgressor, to be 
right and needful in the proprieties of the case. To connect 
the notion of a necessary forgiveness, as the moral and the 
intrinsic logical consequence of a confession and repentance 
of the criminal, as is done by the Socinian theology, is not 
only false, but absurd ; it is to claim exemption from the just 
penal claims of the public law, simply because the criminal 
does justice to his own act. The sinner condemns himself; 
or, in other words, affirms the justice of his own condemna- 
tion, which logically excludes the obligation of forgiveness 
by affirming the just obligation to the precise opposite ; that 
is, to condemnation instead of forgiveness. If it is just for 
the sinner himself to condemn his own wrong, it is just for 
any other intelligent and just judgment to condemn the evil 
done, whether God or man ; and as the administrators of the 
law are under bond to execute the law, they cannot possibly 
be exempt from their obligation solely because the criminal 
has seen something in his offence to condemn. Repentance 
lays no obligation on the divine government to forgive, inde- 
pendent of a just satisfaction to the claims of the law. Jus- 
tice is done to the evil in the act by the sinner by repentance ; 
but it only meets one part of the case ; it fails to do justice to 
the violated law, and the dishonored authority of the Law- 



The Necessity of Repentance. 167 

giver. Repentance is justice, so far as it can go, but it cannot 
meet all that justice demands ; and, because it is just for 
the transgressor to condemn himself, repentance is absolutely 
demanded at his hands. 

2. The second ground on which rests the indispensable 
requisite of repentance is found in the continued obligation 
of the preceptive part of the law. The sin of the transgressor 
has not abolished the jurisdiction of the law over him. He 
is bound in the same way, and to the same degree, as he was 
before his offence; he is still bound to render a perfect 
obedience. Sin does not abolish law. It would be an easy 
method to annihilate responsibility if it were possible. One 
violation of law leaves the law still demanding obedience ; 
the demand of obedience prohibits any repetition of the evil 
done ; it requires the instant cessation of sin. This quitting 
of sin is the essence of repentance. Repentance, then, is 
manifestly the very thing which the law requires by its con- 
tinued obligation to obedience. It is the very thing which 
would result from compliance with the unrelaxed obligation 
of the law. This consideration clearly illustrates the demand 
of repentance, irrespective of any question of its bearing on 
the relief of the transgressor ; it farther discredits the 
Socinian plea of repentance logically involving an obligation 
to forgiveness. Our Lord teaches that when full obedience is 
rendered to the law, the obedient servant has only done what 
his duty required him to do, and could claim no reward. 
Repentance, then, as indispensable duty to the broken law, 
can carry no moral or logical claim to forgiveness. The obli- 
gation to repent results from the perpetual obligation of an 
unchangeable and absolutely righteous law. So far we have 
proceeded on the supposition that repentance held no neces- 
sary connection with the release of the sinner; he is bound 
to repent, whether it has any such effect or not. 



168 The Necessity of Repentance. 

3. But on the supposition that he is to be saved, the neces- 
sity of repentance becomes still more strikingly obvious. 
This springs from several considerations. 

In the first place, salvation in sin is a contradiction in 
terms ; it is a positive impossibility in the nature of things. 
Salvation in sin is as purely a solecism in expression as to 
speak of health in disease, or rationality in insanity. Sin 
is a positive force which tends to mischief; it is in itself a 
fountain of pollution, and a natural cause of pain ; it carries 
the seeds of death. To save a sinner at all, he must be saved 
from sin ; he must be restrained from violating law. Salva- 
tion to a sinner is per se salvation from sin, or it is nothing ; 
it can be realized in no other way. The hope of salvation 
in the unchecked indulgence and under the unbroken domin- 
ion and power of sin is an absurdity. That is to say, in other 
words, repentance is indispensable to the salvation of a sinner. 

In the second place, the honor of God as the author and 
administrator of the law absolutely demands repentance in 
the sinner, on the supposition that he is saved from the conse- 
quences and from the stain of his sin. To save him while he 
continues in the undisturbed career of violence to the law 
is for the Lawgiver to discount his own honor, for it implies 
disregard to his own legislation. It implies that he sets no 
great value or esteem on his own commands. His laws are a 
part of his arrangements to carry out his ends and purposes, 
and indifference to his laws is the repudiation of his own 
plans. Yet further, the law is the law of right ; to repudiate 
the law is to repudiate intrinsic righteousness. To do this, 
God must alter the very quality of his own being. It is 
eternally right that a righteous law should be maintained ; to 
refuse to maintain it is to do an essential wrong. To suppose 
God to do this, is not only blasphemous, but absurd. It is fit 
and becoming in all moral beings to maintain righteous law ; 



The Xecessity oe Repentance. 169 

it is inexorably true that the Lawgiver must and will do it ; 
to refuse to do it is to deny and impeach himself. The law 
itself is unchangeable, and to allow the transgressor to escape 
the penalty of the law while steadily pursuing the course of 
his transgressions, is at once to impeach the law as wanting in 
excellence, and deficient in force. Both the claims of the 
Lawgiver and the demands of the law inflexibly require the 
sinner to quit his career of unchecked transgression, in order 
to make salvation possible for him. In other words, repent- 
ance is indispensable to the salvation of a sinner. 

In the third place, still more does the honor of God, as the 
author of deliverance to the transgressor, require repentance 
at his hands. A good man may interfere to rescue an unfor- 
tunate child from distress or great want ; but he will not feel 
that he has done his duty, if he introduces the object of his 
kindness into circumstances where his integrity will be 
assailed by influences which will be almost sure to result in 
his moral ruin. Lie will feel that his charity will be incom- 
plete, and of doubtful moral value, unless he does all in his 
power to secure the being he has befriended from all special 
exposure to moral corruption, and place him where he will 
have a fair chance to lead an honorable life. God is under 
bond to his own integrity to save the object of his grace from 
moral ruin. The idea that God should pardon sin while the 
sinner continues to transgress is to charge the infinitely Holy 
One with criminal weakness. He can be no party to any 
enfranchisement to do evil; the notion is preposterous. He 
cannot pardon at all without a full contentment of justice 
by a competent satisfaction of its claims ; and to do it while 
the evil is perpetually repeated would impeach him as unjust 
and unholy, as regardless of evil. This doctrine of the 
necessity of repentance is not the exclusive datum of the 
scriptures; it is also the datum of common sense. To see 



170 The Necessity of Repentance. 

the unbiased judgment of the human heart, see the tremen- 
dous sketch of the king's remorse, as drawn by the great 
interpreter of human nature : 

"Oh ! my offence is rank ; it smells to heaven ; 
It hath the primal, eldest curse upon it, 
A brother's murder ! Pray can I not, 
Though inclination be as sharp as will ; 
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent ; 
And like a man to double business bound, 
I stand in pause where I shall first begin, 
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand 
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood? 
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens, 
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy, 
But to confront the visage of offence? 
And what's in prayer, but this twofold force, 
To be forestalled, ere we come to fall, 
Or pardoned being down ? Then I'll look up ; 
My fault is past. But oh ! what form of prayer 
Can serve my turn ? Forgive me my foul murder ! 
That cannot be ; since I am still possessed 
Of those effects for which I did the murder, 
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. 
May one be pardoned, and retain the offence? 
In the corrupted currents of this world, 
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice ; 
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself 
Buys out the law. But 'tis not so above ; 
There is no shuffling ; there the action lies 
In his true nature ; and we ourselves compelled, 
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, 
To give in evidence. What then? What rests? 
Try what repentance can? What can it not? 
let what can it when one cannot repent? 
O wretched state ! O bosom black as death ! 
O limed soul ! that, struggling to be free, 
Art more engaged. Help ! angels, make essay ! 
Bow, stubborn knees ! and heart with strings of steel, 
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe ; 
All may be well !" 



The Xecessity of Repentance. 171 

Unless God's character can be compromised in the indulg- 
ence of his grace, man must repent. The necessity is absolute. 

In the fourth place, the natural and unalterable opposition 
between holiness and sin requires that one or the other must 
give way. They cannot coexist in the same personality; 
light and darkness, heat and cold, pain and pleasure, good and 
evil can as easily coexist at one and the same time, and in the 
same sensibility, as holiness and sin. Without holiness, no 
man can see the Lord ; and if the sinner is ever to become 
pure, he must necessarily abandon sin ; in other words, he 
must repent. 

In the fifth place, the honor of the law, not less than the 
honor of the Lawgiver, equally requires it. To release a 
sinner who persists in denying that his acts of transgression 
are evil to any noticeable degree is to yield the law as wrong. 
If the violation of a law is'a matter of little or no importance, 
as a matter of course, the law itself is of no particular conse- 
quence. If the breach is right or worthy of no regard, then 
the law is a wrong, because its demand is an impertinence. 
But such an imputation on the law is an absurdity, because 
the law of God is, in its very nature, the law of right ; it is 
law just because it is the expression of that eternal distinction 
in the nature of things which is called right. The law is a 
transcript of the very nature of God, an impression struck 
by his own attributes as the types of imprint. To deliver a 
sinner in the persistent breach of the law is the supposition 
of his delivery in violation of right ; that is, it is a necessary 
wrong. Moreover, all other moral and intelligent beings of 
every rank and class acknowledge the excellence of the law, 
and the consequent evil of its violation. Christ, in his work 
of delivering the sinner, confessed the justice and purity of 
the law ; he came to fulfil it, in order to accomplish his pur- 
pose ; not one jot or tittle of it was to pass until all had been 



172 The Necessity of Repentance. 

fulfilled. The angels who attended the giving of the law 
amid the thunders of Sinai approved it. God approved it. 
It is eternally fit and becoming that the sinner who is deliv- 
ered from its righteous claims should not be permitted to 
deny what every just-minded being confesses to be true. The 
breach of such a law involves necessarily a wrong; and this 
essential excellence of the law demands repentance for the 
breach of its requirements, as simple justice to the wrong and 
justice to itself. The law proclaims it to be eternally and 
unchangeably right that a sinner should repent. It is but 
justice to his deeds. To say that every other being should do 
justice to evil except the criminal himself is an obvious ab- 
surdity. If it is right in itself to condemn wrong, it is 
binding on every subject of the law of right to condemn it, 
and the transgressor himself is no exception to the rule. The 
honor and claim of the law to esteem will be irretrievably 
compromised if it should consent to any other decision ; both 
absolutely demand repentance at the sinner's hands on the 
supposition that he is saved. It is required of him, inde- 
pendent of any removal of his liabilities ; it is demandable of 
him, with a thousand-fold more emphasis, on the supposition 
that he is saved from the just consequences of his criminality. 
In the sixth place, the peace, order, purity, and happiness 
of the universe demand repentance of the sinner. Sin is 
contagious. If sinning creatures are blessed in their sin, 
not only is the law nullified, but the securities of holiness 
'in the sinless creation are broken down. Contact with sin 
is always dangerous. To gratify the insane wish of the carnal 
heart to be made perfectly happy without the sacrifice of its 
favorite sins would be to throw open the universe of God to 
the universal spread and the unrestrained dominion of moral 
evil and its inevitable consequences. It would issue a charter 
as broad as the wide creation, and as durable as its existence, 



The Necessity of Repentance. 173 

for the supremacy of all manner of violence to the purity 
and peace of God's dominions. 

In the last place, another reason vindicating the inexorable 
demand of repentance is that until the soul of the saved sinner 
has been taught to appreciate the evil of sin by the experience 
of a struggle with its disastrous dominion, it will never be 
able to appreciate the salvation of grace, and the grace of 
salvation. A sinner in love with his own lawless liberty 
will never be brought even to wish for deliverance from his 
fascination but dangerous self-indulgences. He never will, 
or can, understand the value of the redemption from sin 
until he has learned to understand its evil and to dread its 
supremacy. He will never understand or appreciate the 
grace of God in salvation until he can see how richly he has 
deserved his wrath. It is a wide-spread, if not an universal 
law, that contrast is needful to the completeness of know- 
ledge and discernment. The love of God and the blessedness 
of heaven itself will forever be incompetently judged, even 
by the souls of the saved, except through repentance. It is 
alike demanded by the necessities of the case, and by the 
best interests of the sinner. 

From this exposition one or two practical inferences become 
plain : 

1. All men are bound to repent, or abandon the hope of 
salvation. No one is exempt: the rule is repent or perish. 
There is not one in a thousand, of those who hear the gospel 
preached, who does not expect and intend to comply with 
the condition. But they all with one consent postpone the 
actual compliance. If they were in possession of guarantees 
of life, and of assurances that protraction of resistance to 
the divine will would work no forfeiture or diminution of 
future chances, there might be some sense in this line of 
conduct. But it is foolish policy, because no man has any 



174 The Necessity of Repentance. 

guarantee of life, and privilege is often forfeited by abuse. 
The policy is contradictory and absurd. It is to firmly 
resolve upon an end, and to abandon all attention to the means 
of attaining it. No better assurance of failure can be given 
or conceived. 

2. It is the duty and the supreme interest of every sinner 
to repent at once. The law of repentance prescribes instant 
action, as in the case of every duty. Besides, no guarantee 
can be given that time and space for repentance will be con- 
tinued or be renewed in any part of the future. The oppor- 
tunity will cease at death ; it may cease before it. 

3. The true dictate of prudence and conscience alike is 
not only instant action, but the most diligent and earnest 
use of all the means which have been appointed to be used 
in seeking the hope of eternal life. Now is the accepted 
time; now is the day of salvation. The refusal to obey 
the voice which calls to repentance may secure for us the 
bitter pains of Esau, who, as the final issue of his folly, found 
no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully and 
with tears. 



JUSTIFICATION 



"Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in 
Christ Jesus." — Romans iii. 24. 

THE position of a sinning moral agent under the govern- 
ment of God has been seen to involve him in two great 
leading responsibilities : one, guilt, under its twofold form 
of desert and liability to punishment; the other, depravity, 
or the necessary polluting influence of his sin upon his own 
soul. The way of relief from the first of these difficulties 
is through the atonement of Christ. The method of relief 
from the second is through the regenerating and sanctifying 
work of the Holy Spirit. The object of the present discussion 
is to explain this method of gaining relief from that element 
of guilt which involves liability to penal pains. The ques- 
tion is, how shall the iron link between sin and penalty be 
broken and the transgressor be allowed to escape ? But this 
is not all. Xot only does the great exigency require that the 
connection between sin and penalty should be broken; but 
also that the connection between obedience and reward should 
be reestablished. A real salvation involves not only release 
from penalty, but a title to life. Unless this title to life 
can be achieved, conscience cannot be quieted, nor can any 
reliable hope of future well-being be enkindled in the human 
heart. To accomplish both of these ends, the sinner must be 
justified in the full sense of that term; and the most im- 
portant inquiry which can be raised by the mind of man is, 
"How can man be just with God ?" Man has already broken 
the law; the claims of the law are now penal as well as 



176 Justification. 

preceptive, and justification can only be predicated on the 
fulfilment of all the claims of the law. How, then, can these 
claims of the law, now become penal as well as preceptive, 
possibly be fulfilled ? How can these inflexible penal claims 
be satisfied on any terms consistent with the deliverance of 
the transgressor? How shall the broken precept be now 
honored with an obedience which will not only meet the cur- 
rent demands of the precept, but establish and convey a title 
to a reward which has been already forfeited % Manifestly 
man himself can do neither. He cannot satisfy the penalty 
and yet live. He can satisfy it by enduring it; but this is 
a supposition which implies his ruin, and his salvation on 
this contingency is self-contradictory and impossible ; he can- 
not be saved and at the same time lost. He cannot fulfil 
the precept; for his sin has so corrupted his moral nature 
that all the acts which flow from it are tainted, and he is 
disabled from rendering that perfect obedience which the 
law demands, and which alone can carry its rewards. How, 
then, shall a transgressor of law possibly be justified \ The 
gospel gives the answer to the question in the words of the 
text, "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemp- 
tion that is in Christ Jesus." Since man cannot effect his 
own justification, if accomplished at all, it must be done for 
him by some one else. The gospel answers the great question 
by the doctrine of a substitute for the hopeless transgressor 
undertaking to do for him what it was impossible for him 
to do for himself; and the development of that wondrous 
conception constitutes the essence and the chief distinction 
of the Christian religion. The development of this grand 
thought of a substitute for the sinner embraces the grand 
formulas of all the distinctive doctrines of Christianity: 
justification by faith, atonement, redemption, imputation, the 
divinity of the Redeemer, the infinitude of the divine grace 



Justification. 177 

and the absolute effectiveness of the work done for the deliv- 
erance of the transgressors of the divine law. The doctrine 
of justification, which is the verbal description of the 
grand thing which was done by the great Substitute in 
order to qualify the relations of the undone transgressor to 
the law which he had broken, so as to admit of his escape 
from ruin, is the member of this category of revealed truth 
to which we are now to give our attention. 

1. The first inquiry we raise is the question touching the 
meaning of the term "justification" ; and the second relates 
to the use, or purpose, or object of the thing embraced in 
that term. In reply to the first of these inquiries, we may 
say that the term "justification" is one of a family of legal 
terms employed to denote the different actual and possible 
relations to the law of God. It has no relation to personal 
character ; it carries no subjective significance whatever. It 
is a law term exclusively expressive of relations to law. To 
understand the peculiar relation to the law conveyed by the 
term "justification," we must first apprehend what the natural 
relation of a responsible moral agent is to the law of God, 
and the actual status of such a creature under law at the 
beginning of his career. All the rational, moral and respon- 
sible creatures of Almighty God come under the obligation 
of the law the instant they come into possession of their 
responsible being. The obligation is not the result of com- 
pact or agreement ; it is the necessary datum of their creation. 
As a child is born subject to the authority of its parents, and 
this relation of subjection at once ensues on the birth of the 
child, just so God's creature comes into subjection to his law 
the very instant of his existence, and in the case of a creature 
like man, who is born with his responsible faculties incapable 
of use until their development occurs, the law suspends its 
demands until that occurrence. His status under the law is 
12 



178 Justification. 

that of a servant, bound to obey, unable to claim any reward 
for his obedience, because the law is endless in its claims, and 
his obligation can never be completed. When he has done 
all in a given series, he is still an unprofitable servant. While 
he can claim no reward, yet his happiness is perfect, and 
as full as his nature will allow. But this happiness is not 
of the nature of a reward of merit due to an unobligated 
service; it is the natural and necessary effect of obedience 
to the law. 

Another striking incident of this natural relation of a ser- 
vant to the law is a perpetual liability to fall from his obe- 
dience. Just as during the fulfilment of a human contract, 
and before the contract is completed there is a constant 
possibility of a failure to fulfil it, a liability which ceases 
when the contract is finished; so under the law of God, the 
liability to fall appears to be the natural and inevitable 
incident of the relation of a servant. At all events, this lia- 
bility to fall appears to have attached to both of the only two 
great races of responsible moral creatures of which we have 
any knowledge — angels and men ; a liability which not only 
existed, but actually resulted in the actual fall of a part of 
the one race, and the whole of the other. But this possibility 
of a fall remains a mere possibility, and so long as the crea- 
ture actually obeys, his relation to the law is simply that of 
continued obligation to the precept of the law. He is under 
no obligation to the penalty as long as he is obedient to the 
precept. His obligation to the precept is unlimited, and his 
state of trial under the law is equally without a bound. The 
legal status of such being is defined under the term innocence. 
As long as he continues to obey the law, he remains innocent ; 
but mere innocence is the only legal status which a servant 
can develop under his relation to the law; and this status 
of mere innocence will be perpetually attended with the 



Justification. 179 

liability to fall from the state of innocence to a state of guilt. 
Let it be carefully and clearly noted that the obligation of the 
law on its original and natural basis is perpetual; it is in- 
definite and without limit as to time ; and, consequently, that 
its claims can never be completed; that the legal status 
created by this state of the creature's relations to the law is 
unalterable, so long as those relations continue the same, the 
obedience of a legal servant can never be completed and 
finished as to time, no matter how perfect in degree his 
obedience may be. To alter the relation of a servant under 
law, to change the status of mere innocence with its perpetual 
liability to fall, and introduce a status of absolute safety, it 
is absolutely necessary that a limit of time must be fixed, 
beyond which a new legal status may spring up. Supposing 
such a limit fixed, and obedience successfully rendered up to 
that limit, it is clear that a new status will immediately 
result. This new status will be expressed by the term right- 
eous, and the obedient creature will be in a state of justifica- 
tion, as distinguished from a state of mere innocence. This 
change of legal standing is of high importance. In the state 
of mere innocence no reward could be claimed, and a hazard 
of a fall or failure was perpetually incident. In a state of 
justification, a title to the promised reward is unalterably 
secured, and all liability to fall or fail is forever barred. 
The principle is identical with those principles of justice and 
common sense which regulate the business contracts of men. 
While a contract is being fairly carried out, the contractor is 
in a state of innocence ; but he is not entitled to the reward 
of the contract until he has fully completed it. If, in the 
course of his work, he makes a mistake, and the other party 
chooses to overlook it, he is pardoned; but he is not yet 
entitled to the reward; that remains conditioned upon the 
fulfilment of the contract. If he is accused of bavins: failed 



180 Justification. 

to carry out some specification in the contract, and proves 
that he has carried it out, he is not pardoned, but acquitted ; 
but acquittal, no more than pardon, entitles him to claim the 
reward of the contract; that remains absolutely contingent 
upon the one single and inflexible condition of fulfilling the 
contract according to its terms. All through the process of 
fulfilling the contract, and before its fulfilment, there is a 
possibility that the contractor may fail in some of the require- 
ments of his contract ; but when he has actually fulfilled and 
completed it, this liability is barred ; all risk is forestalled, 
and he is justified from all impeachment or question under 
the contract. He is no longer merely innocent ; he no longer 
needs pardon or acquittal; he is justified, and this legal 
state of justification releases him from all the hazardous 
incidents of an unsettled and unfinished series of conditions 
to be fulfilled, and entitles him to the promised reward. 
Justification is salvation, whether it be justification by works, 
as Adam would have been if he had stood fast in his integrity,, 
or justification by faith as the grace of God has provided in 
the gospel. All who are justified by faith have eternal life. 
It is perfectly clear that the possibility of justification de- 
pends upon the possibility of securing a limit to the time of 
obedience ; it is the legal status which results from completing 
the claims of the law, just as the rewards of a contract wait 
upon the fulfilment of the contract. But such a completion 
would be impossible where the natural claim of the law, in- 
definite in time, was left unmodified by the Lawgiver. No 
man could fulfil a contract which required work to be done 
for an endless or indefinite time. The establishment of such 
a limit is solely the work of the Lawgiver himself; no one 
else would have any authority to modify the law in any par- 
ticular; no one else could determine what modification was 
proper or possible. If the Lawgiver should order any such 



Justification. 181 

modification, it would be an act of pure sovereignty on one 
side, and of infinite kindness on the other. Here, then, we 
see the reason why God has always dealt w T ith man under the 
form of a covenant. We hear a great deal about "covenants" 
in the teaching of the scriptures — the covenant of works, and 
the covenant of grace: the one with Adam, the other with 
Christ. In order to mark the limitation of time which is 
necessary to the completion of obedience, and to render justi- 
fication possible, God condescends to waive, for a time and 
a purpose, his right to demand obedience without conditions, 
and makes his law the basis of a positive agreement or cove- 
nant with his creature. He says, in effect, "I have a right to 
your obedience, independent of your consent; but I will 
waive that claim, and we will come to a voluntary agreement 
that you shall obey the law for a specified period; and if 
your obedience is perfect up to that time, I will bestow the 
specified reward upon you." The promise of reward was 
logically implied in the threat of punishment for disobedi- 
ence; and both the promise of reward and the menace of 
punishment imply a limitation in the period of trial. Such 
was the nature of the transaction with Adam in the garden. 
Xow let us suppose that he had obeyed instead of sinning. 
He complies with the law up to the limit of time affixed in 
the covenant. What would have been the effect upon his 
legal standing? His relation to the law would have been 
altered. He would no longer have been merely innocent, but 
righteous ; he would have been no longer in a state of inno- 
cence, but in a state of justification. He would have been 
just before the law, not merely blameless. He would have 
been justified by his works ; he would have been made just, 
or placed in this new state of justification by the good deeds 
of personal service which he had done. Other changes of 
vast, importance would have taken place in his status under 



182 Justification. 

the law. The justice and veracity of God would have been 
bound to him. The possibility of establishing such a claim 
of the creature upon the Creator originates in the mere sov- 
ereign goodness of God ; it results in a bond upon his faith- 
fulness. The appointment of the covenant and its limitation 
of time is the determination of pure sovereign kindness in the 
King ; but he is bound by his covenant when he makes it, and 
when that covenant is complied with, it creates a bond upon 
his justice and his truth. This bond upon the covenant- 
fidelity of God reveals another grand benefit of this state of 
justification; it secures the absolute safety of the justified 
person ; it bars the liability to fall, just as the fulfilment of a 
human contract bars the liability to fail under the contract ; 
it secures the integrity and the consequent safety of the 
justified person. Adam would have been in no farther danger 
if he had succeeded in justifying himself by completing his 
obedience. It is one of the most inexpressible benefits of 
justification; it bars the liability to fall, establishes a guar- 
antee of integrity, and thus secures the safety of the justified. 
It secures a title to indefectible holiness which will procure 
it inevitably in the end, although in the case of a sinner justi- 
fied by grace, that holiness may be imparted at the end of a 
long struggle with the power of evil. Justification secures 
integrity. Yet another benefit of justification is that it opens 
the way, and removes all impediments to another grand 
change in the status of a justified person ; it leads up to his 
adoption into the family of God, and to the alteration of the 
relation of a servant into the relation of a son. It leads up 
to an exaltation far above all the relations of mere nature — to 
the far higher and more precious relation of a Son and heir 
of the eternal King. On the mere basis of natural or creative 
relations, a devil or a pirate is as much a son of God as an 
apostle or an angel of light. The legal relation of a son by 



Justification. 183 

creation is that of a servant, which is alterable; the natural 
relation of sonship by creation is unchangeable ; a devil or a 
pirate can never cease to be a son or creature of the Almighty. 
But the legal relation of a servant, which is bottomed on the 
sonship of creation, is capable of change, and may be exalted 
into the legal relation of a son which finds its logical basis 
in the legal status of justification, and its subjective or per- 
sonal foundation in the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. 
Another benefit of justification is the high and unimpeachable 
ground which it lays for all the joy of a lively and assured 
hope during the earthly pilgrimage of a justified person. 
The legal securities of a state of justification, and the grand 
insurances of the infinite love of an adopting Father, war- 
rant a hope full of immortality, even when the justified 
and adopted son of God is toiling through the sands of the 
desert, whose farther boundary is the chill stream of death. 
It is impossible to enhance the blessedness of a real and reli- 
able justification to any understanding which really compre- 
hends what it means. The terrors of a state of condemnation 
are easily taken in; the blessedness of justification is em- 
braced in all that is found in the exact and full antithesis 
to that dreadful state. The one is the consummation of evil ; 
the other is the consummation of all that is good. 

Mark the origin, and the only possible origin, of this state 
of justification, so rich in benefit to the justified person. It 
is the master principle of the whole notion of justification, 
whether by works or grace, without a clear and constant hold 
on which there can be no consistent or useful conception of 
the glorious doctrine. It springs from the completion of all 
the claims of the law, and cannot possibly spring from any- 
thing else. This is the feature which is essential to justifica- 
tion, and differentiates it from all other actual or possible 
relations of a creature to the law of God. Justification, with 



184 Justification. 

all its blessed results, was only possible under a covenant, 
because no completion was possible to the claims of a law 
indefinite and perpetual as to time, until a limit of time to 
an obedience perfect in degree was fixed by a specific cove- 
nant agreement. The law binds perpetually ; but a segment 
of that unending obligation may be segregated by a specific 
covenant to obey it; the law, without change, becomes the 
basis of the covenant ; and when that covenant character 
comes to an end by the completion or rupture of its terms, 
the law simply resumes its original and natural character 
as law, unmodified by any voluntary compact to obey it. But 
so long as the covenant character is superinduced upon the 
law, justification becomes a glorious possibility, and all its 
happy results to a justified person will become a glorious 
reality. Notice that justification is possible to a sinless being, 
as the case of Adam proves. We call attention to this point, 
because we shall see, when the possibility of justification to 
a sinful being is discussed, that some confound justification 
with the mere pardon of sin. A sinless being is capable of 
justification, but is incapable of pardon, for pardon neces- 
sarily implies the existence of sin. Nothing could more 
clearly prove the radical difference between justification and 
mere pardon; every party to a business contract knows that 
overlooking a mistake in carrying out a contract is a very 
different thing from the fulfilment of the contract, which is 
the only thing which carries a title to the reward of the con- 
tract. The pardon of a blunder or a fault does not carry a 
claim to the reward. Such is the nature of justification ; it 
is a relation to the law, a legal status created by the complete 
fulfilment of its claims. 

2. The second inquiry in forming just views of justification 
touches the object of it. What are the special ends or designs 
of the benevolent God in seeking to secure a real justifica- 



Justification. 185 

tion — a change in the relations of his responsible creatures 
to his necessary and unalterable law, which, while not at all 
affecting the law itself, would absolutely secure the safety 
of the creature ? The nature and effects of justification 
which we have just seen are directly suggestive of its ends 
and purposes. It was legally and justly to remove the 
hazards necessarily attaching to the natural position of a 
responsible moral agent under the divine law of morals, and 
to secure his absolute safety. We have seen that the natural 
relation of a moral and intelligent creature under his law 
was that of a servant bound to obey, and incapable of altering 
his natural standing and relation to the law. This relation 
of a servant involved a perpetual state of probation, a con- 
stant liability to fall, the impossibility of ever rising above 
the mere state of innocence, with its perpetual hazards, and 
achieving a condition of righteousness which would have 
carried safety. The creature could never transcend his own 
natural limitations ; never achieve a claim to any reward 
beyond the happy incidental results of his own obedience; 
never establish any guarantee, either of his own integrity 
or his own happiness. These seem to be the natural and 
unavoidable incidents of the natural and necessary relations 
of a responsible creature under the divine law. From the 
actual policy pursued by God towards the creature, and from 
some hints and inferences in the scriptures, his policy towards 
the whole universe of unfallen moral agents, as displayed 
in the covenant of grace in its incidental bearings, it seems 
to be clear that God was not altogether content with this 
state of things. He seems to have resolved to put a limit 
upon the probation of the creature ; to make an end of the 
hazards involved in the situation; to provide for the eternal 
security of the creature, and to raise him from the risky 
position of a servant to the secure position of a son. In order 



186 Justification. 

to accomplish this, justification under the law was the only 
method possible. The completion of all the claims of the 
law, if that was possible, would answer all these ends. The 
liability to fall would be forever barred, and the everlasting 
security of holiness and happiness would be guaranteed by 
the truth and faithfulness of God to his covenant engage- 
ments. All danger would be forever excluded; a positive 
title to an everlasting life would be secured, as provided in 
the promise of the covenant ; and the justified person would 
be endowed with many priceless blessings, among which the 
elevation from the relation of a servant to the relation of a 
son would give an additional guarantee to his absolute safety. 
These grand ends were the object of justification — the pur- 
pose sought to be accomplished by our benignant Lord in all 
his contrivances to secure it. What inexpressible goodness 
is involved in the character of a covenant-making and a 
covenant-keeping God, whether as the God of a covenant of 
works with Adam, or the far more wonderful and glorious 
covenant of grace with Christ. This latter method of justi- 
fication, not only accomplishes the justification of the ungodly 
among men, but also apparently secured the unfallen angels 
from falling, and laid the foundation for the security of all 
future races which it may please God to create, from falling 
from their innocent state in which they assuredly will be 
created, if created at all. Had man stood in the garden 
trial, he would have secured himself and his own race forever, 
being justified by his works. But in that case, in all proba- 
bility all the rest of the unfallen creatures then existing or 
hereafter to exist, would have had to remain forever under 
the necessary risks of their natural relation to the law as 
only servants bound to obey, and through the whole course 
of their being exposed to the hazard of a fall. But man 
failed under the covenant of works. He not only did not 



Justification. 187 

fulfil the covenant and achieve justification, but thereby ren- 
dered it impossible that he ever could justify himself by 
his own exertions. Justification is only possible on the com- 
plete fulfilment of the law, and man had actually broken it, 
and forestalled the possibility of justification by his own 
acts. But God did not forsake him ; he contrived a w T ondrous 
scheme to secure his justification by grace; and in working 
out this justification of the ungodly, it seems as if he also 
wrought out a security for the unf alien universe through this 
same righteousness of God, by which he achieved the justifica- 
tion of ungodly men. We cannot go now into this branch of 
the subject ; but we cannot well fail to see some lights falling, 
not clearly, yet not altogether dimly, on the great mystery 
of permitted sin and death in the universe. As the casting 
away of Israel was the enrichment of the Gentiles, so the 
permitted fall of the human race, and its subsequent redemp- 
tion, appears to furnish the occasion, if it was not the neces- 
sary condition, to the security of the whole existing and 
future unfallen universe, and to the fixation of a final limit 
to the spread of moral evil in God's fair dominions — a terri- 
ble possibility, which is apparently essentially incident to 
the natural relation of the creature to the law of God, and 
incapable of being limited or altered in any other way than 
by this method of justification through the righteousness of 
God himself, wrought out by his assumption of the character 
of a Redeemer for the lost. The development of that strange 
and glorious conception is the exposition of what is known 
as the gospel of Christ. 

3. Bearing in mind the fact that justification involves as 
its vital element the completion of all the claims of the law, 
and this only being possible by the law being made the basis 
of a covenant, a third inquiry springs up, involving a new 
presentment of the issue of the very greatest importance to 



188 Justification. 

mankind, based upon the fallen condition of the human race. 
Is justification possible to a sinner — to one who has not only 
not fulfilled the claims of the law, but has actually violated 
those claims with every conceivable variety and degree of 
iniquity ? This is the great question for a fallen race. No 
other can compete with it in importance, for it involves the 
possibility of salvation to a sinner or the certainty of his 
ruin. It is a question which seemed to involve a contradic- 
tion. It is a question which had engaged and baffled human 
ingenuity for ages, and all created wisdom was equally power- 
less to solve it. It was a question which only the very riches 
of infinite wisdom could determine. The answer is given in 
the gospel of the Nazarene, and the development of the plan 
by which it was accomplished constitutes that glorious revela- 
tion of infinite grace which makes the religion of Christ the 
confidence and the only hope of the sinning world. Let us 
look at the difficulties which had to be solved. 

We have seen that as long as the creature obeys the law 
he is safe; he is entirely innocent before the law, and in no 
danger from its penal force. He is not justified; for the 
status of justification only emerges on the completion of the 
law's demands. But now let us suppose that he fails in his 
obedience and violates the law. What is the effect on his 
relations to the law? He at once becomes amenable to the 
penalties of the law; innocence no longer expresses his legal 
status; he has become guilty, and immediately passes into 
the status of condemnation. But his relation to the precept 
of the law remains exactly the same that it was before; he 
is still bound to the same perfect obedience, for no breach of 
law can possibly abolish law; but now justification involves 
the satisfaction of the penal, as well as the preceptive, claims 
of the law. The claims of the law have been enlarged ; but 
all the demands of the law must be fulfilled to make justifica- 



Justification. 189 

tion possible. Can a sinner possibly justify himself ? Look 
at the constituents of the case. He is still bound by the 
precept which requires a perfect obedience ; but his moral 
energies have become polluted by his transgression, and can 
only energize according to their own existing nature; the 
blackened hand taints all it touches. This circumstance alone 
renders justification impossible; for the corruption of the 
moral nature of the actor makes the required fulfilment of 
the precept of the law impossible. But there is another 
circumstance which still more clearly demonstrates the im- 
possibility of justification to a breaker of the law by his 
own exertions. Mark that the law still binds him, because 
under no circumstances is it capable of change ; it is the law 
of right, or essential morality, and as such is necessarily 
unalterable. But mark the effect of a single sin: the cove- 
nant character of the law, which alone rendered justification 
possible, ceases with either a fulfilment or a breach of the 
covenant; the covenant character of the law is necessarily 
limited by its own period, which is determined by either 
its fulfilment or violation. As soon as the covenant character 
superinduced upon a segment of the law's unchangeable 
demands ceases to exist, the possibility of justification ceases 
with it, and the law resumes its natural relation to the crea- 
ture. The possibility of justification to a transgressor of the 
law by anything he can do in the way of obedience is wholly 
swept away by the legal, as well as by the personal, effect of 
his very first act of disobedience. But, more than this, the 
absurdity of a sinner's justification by his own agency is 
also demonstrated by his inability to cope with the penal 
claims of the law. They must be fully satisfied before justi- 
fication qan emerge. But to satisfy the penal claim of the 
law implies his destruction ; and to postulate his salvation 
is contradictory and absurd. To suppose the fulfilment of 



190 Justification. 

the precept which requires a perfect obedience by an unholy 
being, and the completion of a law in itself perpetual, and 
from which all limitations has been removed by the expira- 
tion of the covenant character superinduced upon it, is an 
absurdity equally glaring. The justification of a transgressor 
by human works of obedience, either by the transgressor him- 
self, or by any other human being acting in his behalf is the 
very frenzy of folly. 

.From this view of the essential conditions of the question, 
we may see not only how inadequate are all schemes of thought 
which condition justification upon human works, but those 
also which confound justification with mere pardon of sin. 
!N"o sinner, any more than any innocent person, can possibly 
be justified unless all the claims of the law have been sat- 
isfied; for this is the very nature of justification. Pardon 
is simply the dissolution of the connection between an offence 
and its penalty ; it simply says to the offender, "You are 
released from your liability to suffer for your sin." This 
release cannot be arbitrarily done under a righteous govern- 
ment, because it would be unjust ; it must proceed upon a 
sufficient reason; and in the case of a law like the eternally 
right and unalterable law of Almighty God, an atonement 
must be made to the divine justice before pardon is possible. 
The guardian of an infant ward has no right to release unpaid 
a bond of his ward's estate without paying it himself; then 
he may pardon the debtor by making him a present of his 
cancelled bond. Justice must be done before mercy is shown 
to the transgressor. Satisfaction to justice is indispensable 
to make pardon possible. But supposing pardon made pos- 
sible, it has in its own nature as pardon exclusive and strictly 
limited reference to the penalty of the law; it only breaks 
the connection between the offence and the penalty ; it cannot 
possibly carry with it a claim to the reward which is con- 



Justification. 191 

ditioned upon the true fulfilment of the law. ~No human con- 
tractor could possibly claim the reward of his contract, just 
because his employer had been kind enough to forgive some 
blunder which he had made. Pardon cannot possibly have 
the effect of justification, or any other effect than that deter- 
mined by its owm nature. Even if pardon, either with or 
without satisfaction, could secure release from the penalty, 
it could not meet the other part of the claims of the law, the 
claims of the precept to perfect obedience. Yet all the claims 
of the law must be satisfied and completely met before justi- 
fication can emerge. Pardon, therefore, cannot accomplish 
the legal status of justification, and to confound the two, and 
attribute to the one the legal effects of the other, is inad- 
missible. 

]^ow t it is unquestionably true that the real salvation of a 
breaker of the divine law involves not merely an escape from 
the penalty of the law, but a title to its reward. He needs 
not only deliverance from hell, but a passport to heaven. 
The inference is irresistible that he needs more than mere 
pardon ; he needs justification. He needs something that will 
not only carry deliverance from danger, but a security for 
happiness. If, when pardoned, he is left to work out the 
other part of his justification by his own fidelity, he knows 
that he will fail ; for the corruption still left in him precludes 
the possibility of that perfect obedience which alone can carry 
the rewards of the law. He needs a fulfilment of all the 
claims of the law, preceptive and penal, which will infallibly 
deliver him from the danger and establish him in security; 
or else there is no such thing as a reliable basis for an assured 
hope. It is irresistibly clear that all schemes of thought 
touching the gospel of Christ which confound justification 
with mere pardon, or deny any justification but mere pardon, 
logically strike at the very foundation of Christian hope and 



192 Justification. 

leave it without stability, floating on mere contingency. Such 
theories leave the transgressor, according to their own terms, 
free from danger, and that only contingent upon personal 
fidelity, but with no achieved title to eternal life. This he can 
only receive at the end of his period of trial, as the reward 
of his own fidelity after pardon — a reward which, though 
contingent upon works, is still affirmed to be of grace in order 
to avoid conflict with certain stern declarations of St. Paul. 
The difference between the effects of a real justification and 
those of a mere pardon, with contingent results, are incom- 
parably in favor of the first. The one secures deliverance 
from the curse of the law, and a sure title to its rewards ; it 
secures a guarantee of integrity and an assured basis for 
personal hope. It provides a full satisfaction for all the 
claims of the law which is essential to peace of mind under a 
clear view of what sin really signifies, and under the near 
approach of death. The scheme of mere pardon only frees 
from the penalty, but secures no title to the reward, and that 
only contingently; it leaves one vast claim of a holy law 
unmet and unsatisfied, no title to life secured, and no rational 
or scriptural basis to prevent a lively hope during the present 
life from being a delusive thing, or incapable of a real com- 
fort to the heart because resting upon an uncertain future 
personal fidelity. So important do we regard the possibility 
of a real justification by the grace of God and the righteous- 
ness of Christ, as compared with the effects of a mere pardon, 
with contingent promises of the rewards of the law, we shall 
dwell a little more fully on the differences between them. 

First, an innocent creature is capable of justification, but is 
incapable of pardon, since pardon implies sin, and is only 
possible to a sinner. This fact discloses a radical difference 
in the very nature of the two acts which cannot be denied 
or altered. The justification of a sinner by grace, which is 



Justification. 193 

a true justification in the strictest sense of the term, as we 
shall see hereafter, includes pardon ; for by fulfilling the 
penal claims of the law it breaks the connection between the 
sin and its penalty ; but it includes far more than this mere 
pardon. It is, therefore, perfectly proper to speak of the 
gospel salvation as securing the pardon of sin ; it is as proper 
so to speak as it is in the systems which make pardon all that 
the gospel secures for the believing sinner. But far more than 
a mere pardon is secured to him. 

Second, the two acts are in their own essential and unalter- 
able nature fundamentally different, and cannot be con- 
founded. One is a judicial act; the other is an executive 
act. The one is the act of a judge administering law, and 
basing his decision upon a question of fact, whether a contract 
has been fairly carried out or not. The other is the act of an 
executive, proceeding on the admission that the law has been 
broken, but remitting the penalty, by an act of executive will, 
for reasons esteemed to be sufficient. The one decrees the 
awards of the law on the demonstration that the law has been 
fulfilled in all its demands. The other relaxes and waives 
the claims of the law, while the breach of the law is confessed 
and not satisfied, by an act of executive will and power, for 
reasons constructively sufficient. The other adjudicates the 
claims of the law as really satisfied by a satisfaction to its 
penalty and an obedience to its precept, not constructively, 
but really, amply, and even excessively sufficient. Christ 
not only fulfilled, but magnified the law and made it hon- 
orable. 

Third, the necessary logical and legal effects of the two 

acts upon the legal relations of a sinning creature shows the 

fundamental nature of the difference between them. The 

legal relation of one who has actually fulfilled all the claims 

of the law is necessarily different, with vital distinctions from 
13 



194 Justification. 

the legal relation of one who has simply been released from 
the penal consequences of a breach of the law, but has never 
fulfilled the claims of the precept. The difference is absolute, 
and is so recognized in all business contracts among men, and 
in the judicial proceedings of all human courts of civil justice. 

Fourth, if justification is identical with mere pardon, there 
is no term which can express the legal status which results 
from compliance with all the conditions of a law or covenant. 
Under a covenant carrying a limit on the period of obedience, 
such a status is possible, for it is possible the covenant may 
be fulfilled ; it is the very status sought by the establishment 
of a covenant. If justification to a sinner is nothing but 
pardon, there is no term to express the relation to law created 
by the fulfilment of its conditions. To confound the terms, 
justification and pardon, is to confound positive relations 
which are essentially and necessarily different. 

Fifth, the use of the term " justification" in perpetual con- 
trast with the term "condemnation," settles the question that 
justification is a forensic or judicial term, which carries the 
notion which is in direct contrast with the notion of con- 
demnation. Moses says, "They shall justify the righteous 
and condemn the wicked." Solomon declares, "He that justi- 
fieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they 
both are abomination to the Lord." Paul says, "It is God 
that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?" He also de- 
clares that "the judgment was by one to condemnation, but 
the free gift is of many offences unto justification." These 
terms are so clearly opposed that the meaning of the one may 
be determined by the other. Condemnation is a legal term 
expressive of a certain relation to law ; it confers no personal 
or subjective depraving influence on the character of the con- 
demned person. It simply declares that the law, or contract, 
has been violated, and formally decrees the subjection of the 



Justification. 195 

law-breaker to the penalties of the law; but exerts no cor- 
rupting influence on his personal character. Justification, 
then, can only do the same thing in the opposite direction; 
it determines a legal standing without exerting a personal 
subjective influence on the character of the justified person, 
making him personally holy. This personal improvement 
which will inevitably follow justification as one of its effects 
is due to sanctification ; but it is not a part of justification 
itself. It is not allowable to confound cause and effect. This 
overthrows the Roman Catholic doctrine that justification 
is partly forensic, and partly an influence on personal char- 
acter. Acquittal of a charge is simply the affirmation that a 
charge of breach of contract has been disproved ; but neither 
pardon nor acquittal declares that the covenant has been fully 
carried out, and a title to the reward has been achieved. As 
the exact judicial opposite of condemnation affirms that the 
covenant has been fulfilled, and decrees a title to its benefits, 
justification, whether by works or grace, can only possibly 
emerge on the active and full completion of the law; it is 
exclusively determined by action, full and perfect, "Xot the 
hearers of the law are just before God ; but the doers of the 
law shall be justified." If Adam had obeyed, he would have 
been justified by his own works of perfect obedience. Christ 
justifies by his perfect obedience to all the claims of the law, 
both preceptive and penal. 

Such is the nature of justification ; it is a standing before 
the law of God based upon the fulfilment of its claims. When 
a human sinner is justified by grace through faith, when the 
righteousness of a divine Saviour is made over to him, it has 
all the effects of a true and perfect justification. While the 
sacred and unchangeable law of God still requires his obedi- 
ence, his relation or standing under the law is gloriously 
altered ; his status of condemnation is changed to a status of 



196 Justification. 

justification; his sin is pardoned; lie is endowed with a 
perfect righteousness ; his liability to a fatal fall is barred ; 
his integrity is guaranteed ; the Spirit of God takes up his 
perpetual indwelling in his soul to make good the promise, 
"Sin shall not have dominion over you/' and he is raised 
from the relation of a servant to the relation of a son. Justi- 
fication is an incomparable blessing, even to a sinless being. 
Adam would have been infinitely blessed, himself and his 
posterity, if he had kept his integrity, and justified himself, 
and those for whom he acted, by his works. If justification 
to an actual sinner by the grace and righteousness of God is 
possible of attainment, it secures all the beneficial results 
of a real justification, including, in his case, some additional 
benefits which a sinless person, when justified, has no occasion 
to possess; he is delivered from the curse of the law, and 
from the deadly stain which his sin has stamped upon his 
soul. Justification is eternal life. 



JUSTIFICATION BY WORKS. 

"Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified 
in his sight : for by the law is the knowledge of sin." — Romans iii. 20. 

"Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the 
deeds of the law." — Romans iii. 28. 

''Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by fairu 
only." — James ii. 24. 

IT is clear, from the very nature of justification and its 
profound effects on the improvement of the standing of 
the creature in relation to the law, that it is matter of the 
first importance, especially to man as a transgressor, to be 
justified rather than to be merely pardoned; and that all 
theories of religion which confound justification with mere 
pardon, not only misapprehend the doctrine of the gospel, 
but logically unsettle the foundation of the sinner's peace. 
Justification, even to a sinless being, is a matter of supreme 
concern; for it puts an end to the hazards of his position; 
but to a sinful being it is a matter of infinitely more concern, 
for it is the only mode in which he can be rescued from the 
difficulties of his position and established in a state of safety. 
Whether justification is possible to a breaker of law at all 
is a question which was insoluble to any wisdom but the 
infinite wisdom of God himself. It seemed to involve a con- 
tradiction in the very terms of the proposition. Justification 
implies the perfect fulfilment of law; it cannot emerge on 
any other basis ; but a sinner has already broken it, and justi- 
fication is already forestalled. Justification carries a title 
to the reward of a fulfilled law ; but a transgressor is already 
subject to its penalty. How can the law utter a twofold and 



198 Justification by Faith. 

contradictory judgment ? How can it decree a sentence of 
condemnation for a breach of its demands, and at the same 
time a sentence of justification for a fulfilment of its de- 
mands ? How is it conceivable that a man, or any other 
creature who has already sinned, can accomplish his justifica- 
tion by any work whatever which he can do ? No angel, even, 
of the highest gifts, could solve the problem ; and when solved 
for them by the manifold wisdom of God, they are repre- 
sented as prying eagerly into the mystery, as if it presented 
an endless subject of investigation and interest. An apostle 
exclaims, in view of it, a O the riches of the wisdom of God I 
how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past find- 
ing out." The difficulty would have remained insoluble if 
God himself had not appeared in the wonderful role of a 
Saviour justifying the ungodly, and wrought out a righteous- 
ness which fulfilled all the claims of the law, and is made 
available for lost men, on principles which meet every claim 
of justice, and not only satisfy every demand of the holy and 
inflexible law, but magnify and make it honorable. The 
development of the manner in which this great redemption 
was accomplished is the heart and essence of the gospel of 
Christ. The testimony of the word of God is clear and resist- 
less that the righteousness which is of God by faith, is the 
only way of deliverance for breakers of the law ; that by the 
deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified; and announces 
an universal conclusion, which is not impeached in the 
smallest degree by any other testimony in the sacred record, 
as we shall see clearly in the sequel, that "we are justified 
by faith without the deeds of the law." 

Yet, in spite of the clear and powerful declarations of 
the Holy Spirit on this subject, the conviction lies deep in 
the human heart that man can condition his deliverance by 
his own good works and his own excellencies of character. It 



Justification by Faith. 199 

is felt that even if lie cannot do all, and must refer to the 
righteousness which God has revealed to faith for some assist- 
ance in working out his salvation, still he can do something 
which will invite and aid the justification of grace, and so 
take a material part in the realization of his hope. Thousands 
rely upon their own moral excellences to secure a favorable 
verdict when called to the bar of God. Nay, the testimony 
of one or more large branches of the church of God, as in 
spite of grave departures from the faith of Christ they claim 
to be, does articulately affirm a merit and an efficacy in human 
works, to exert a decisive influence upon the forgiveness of 
sins and acceptance with God. Few human errors are without 
some tracery of truth to a greater or less degree ; and it there- 
fore becomes necessary to discriminate the element of truth 
in the doctrine of human merit, and disclose the dangerous 
influence which its allied elements exert in corrupting the 
doctrine of justification by grace. 

The genesis of this error seems to follow the process now 
to be traced. The distinction between right and wrong is 
as native and fundamental a distinction, in the nature of 
things, as the distinction between true and false, or figure 
and size. The perception of right is always attended by a 
sense of obligation ; the distinction has the force of a law. 
Compliance with right is always followed by a feeling of 
approval, and the violation of right by a feeling of condemna- 
tion. It is this feeling of approval when the law of right is 
complied with upon which the doctrine of human merit is 
founded, and which gives it all its plausibility. This feeling 
of approval is confounded with a claim to reward; and the 
desert of penalty for a breach of right or the committal of 
wrong is supposed to carry the contrasted notion of an answer- 
able desert of a positive reward. The desert of punishment 
is construed' as involving the desert of reward. Xow, two 



200 Justification by Faith. 

things interfere fatally with this conclusion. The first is the 
teaching of our Lord in the seventeenth chapter of Luke, and 
the second, the radical distinction between the observance and 
the violation of a previous and intrinsic obligation which does 
not rest upon compact, but binds by its own intrinsic and 
native force. Our Lord cites the example of a hired or bound 
servant coming in from the field, who is not permitted to sit 
down to meat until he has prepared the meal of his master, 
and girded himself and served him. "So likewise ye, when 
ye shall have done all those things which are commanded 
you, say, We are unprofitable servants : we have done that 
which was our duty to do." A previous obligation to do a 
thing is only discharged by doing it, and carries no claim 
to reward. If this obligation to do the thing was the result of 
a previous purchase, all can see that the doing of the thing 
carried no farther claim to additional reward. The previous 
obligation to do it foreclosed any further demand. ISTow, 
if the law of God creates a perfect obligation to obedience 
previous to any action of the creature, and gave the right 
to direct that action, it is clear that any fair and just com- 
pliance with that obligation created no right to demand an 
additional positive remuneration for doing it. A human 
contractor who carries out his contract fairly and honorably 
is entitled to the consideration for which he undertook the 
work; he is also entitled to esteem and moral approval for 
the integrity with which he has discharged his obligations ; 
but he is not entitled to demand additional pay on the ground 
of this integrity. Just so the fair and full obedience of a 
creature will incidentally result in his own well-being; and 
this well-being is a fair reward of his obedience ; he can claim 
no additional positive reward. He has met his obligation, 
and found his account in doing it. But reward he cannot 
claim, for he has only done that which it was his duty to do. 



Justification by Faith. 201 

One member of a family does his part, with the rest of the 
household, towards the support of the family; he deserves 
esteem for doing his duty, but he can claim no special reward ; 
he has only clone what a previous obligation required him 
to do. If one without any such previous obligation had lent 
his aid, there might have been some shadow of a claim to 
remuneration, which might be pleaded ; but even that might 
be subject to the exception that the voluntary and unsolicited 
interposition created no obligation to repay anything more 
than hearty thanks, and to return similar services, if the 
emergencies of the future should demand it. It is the general 
common-sense judgment of mankind that where a previous 
and absolute obligation to do a thing exists, the actual doing 
of it creates no claim to reward for doing it. On the contrary, 
the breach of law inevitably carries with it a liability to the 
penalty, a demand for condemnation, and a censure for breach 
of right. The compliance with obligation carries with it a 
claim to approval, but no claim to reward; the breach of 
obligation carries necessarily a demand of censure and an 
exposure to punishment. A claim to esteem is not the same 
thing as a claim to reward, and to confound the two is to 
make a mistake. This is the first error in the doctrine of the 
possibility of human merit before God. Merit of reward is 
not possible, even to a sinless creature, under the natural 
operation of law; it is only possible under the operation 
of a covenant ; and the logical foundation of that possibility 
is grace, and not justice. 

But farther: the idea of merit in the obedience of a crea- 
ture already guilty and depraved is still more decisively dis- 
credited by the impossibility of such a creature rendering 
any but an imperfect obedience. A tainted fountain must 
send out a tainted current. The merit even of approval can 
only be measured by the law which governs the case; for if 



202 Justification by Faith. 

the law is violated, no approval of the action is possible. In 
other words, the law is the standard of measurement both 
of esteem and reward. Now, the law is perfect; whether 
considered as binding on its natural basis as law, or as the 
basis of a covenant, it can only require a perfect obedience. 
To require less ivonld legalize just so much of sin, which is 
absurd. A nature whose moral energies have already been 
polluted can only energize according to their own nature, and 
cannot possibly yield a perfect obedience to a perfect law. 
A depraved being cannot possibly develop merit under the 
law of God. Whatever qualified merit may be possible 
towards men, as judged by human standards and human com- 
parison with human examples, merit in a fallen creature 
before God, and under the standard of his judgments is alto- 
gether impracticable. 

Yet more : it is an admitted principle in the formation of 
moral judgments that even when an action is substantially 
good, the motive, end or object for which the act is done enters 
into the moral quality of the act and profoundly qualifies it, 
both for good and evil. An act of charity done from pure 
benevolence marks a good act ; the very same act done from 
ostentation marks the Pharisee. A good deed, done from 
real regard to the will of God, is as good an act as an imper- 
fect being can do ; the same act, done to make merit for one's 
self and accomplish one's own salvation, is an offence instead 
of an acceptable service. A patriotic act, done to serve one's 
country, is an act morally good and approvable ; the same 
act, done to serve one's own political advancement, is of a 
far lower moral quality. The rule is universal; all men 
judge all other men by it. Now, it is obvious that in settling 
a question of personal merit, it is not enough to look at what 
men do merely ; their motives and ends must be also appre- 
hended before the question of merit, even in the sight of 



Justification by Faith. 203 

men, can be determined. In settling the spiritual or religious 
quality of any action, or series of actions, or of any system 
of religion which prescribes such series of actions, it is indis- 
pensable to investigate the motive, the object, or the principle 
which animates the energy employed. If this principle is 
religious, the question must be settled whether it is the prin- 
ciple of a true religion, before the true religious character of 
the act or system can be determined. A system both false 
and deadly in its effects mav present a charming appearance. 
The personal character of a Unitarian, or a Romanist, or a 
cultured and high-minded Jew, may present a beautiful 
aspect to the observer; and many an uninformed and unre- 
flecting observer can discover no difference in the religious 
quality of such specimens of moral and religious culture and 
the highest type of evangelical piety. But when the question 
is concerning the Christian quality and the real merit in the 
sight of God of these various forms of personal character, 
the test must be applied of their conformity or non-conformity 
to the requirements of Christ himself in the standards of 
his holy faith. If the Unitarian, the Romanist, and the Jew, 
by a cultured process develop their moral characters with 
a view to lay a basis for their own salvation, with so far a 
distinct repudiation of the redemption work of the Son of 
God, it is obvious that a very different moral and religious 
value must attach to their moral and religious development 
from that which attaches to the development which grows 
out of conformity with the evangelical system of the Founder 
of Christianity. No merit in his eyes can emerge, whether 
merit of approval or merit of reward, from the system of 
the Unitarian, which repudiates the redemption of Christ, 
and establishes a system of mere moral culture as the ground 
of human salvation. jSTo merit in his eyes can emerge out 
of a system which discounts the value of his work by mixing 



204 Justification by Faith. 

with it, as a necessary addendum, the merits of virgin, 
saints, angels, and of the seeker after safety himself, as neces- 
sary to make up what is lacking in the provision made by a 
divine Redeemer. There can no merit emerge when the Jew 
repudiates the whole system which the God of Israel has 
revealed as the sole foundation for human hope. Yet the 
beautiful characters of James Martineau, Blaise Pascal, and 
Sir Moses Montefiore illustrate the beauty of moral culture 
in a high degree, and reveal all that can be accomplished by 
human works. But when their works are compared with what 
the high and holy law of the Almighty God requires, these 
works show far below the requirements of a rule of action 
absolutely perfect. When the motive, the object, the end in 
view which animated these cultured schemes of moral develop- 
ment is tested by the pure and humble spirit of the evangelical 
system of a divine redemption, they exhibit the difference 
between a marble statue, exquisite in its grace, and the living 
form of a beautiful human being, animated with the glorious 
mystery of life, and glowing with the crimson and crystal 
which the cunning hand of God's own grace laid on it. Merit 
in the eyes and under the measurements of the infinite and 
holy One can never develop from the imperfect motives and 
the imperfect actions of any being who has already defined 
himself and his career as fallen away from the standards of 
the divine will, both in character and conduct. No man can 
serve God and self. When the heroic efforts of the Jesuit 
missionary and the patient and self-sacrificing labors of the 
Sister of Charity are done to work out their own salvation, 
and recommend themselves for a share in the redemption 
of grace which is offered to them freely, without money 
and without price, as the sole unpurchasable gift of the 
divine benignity, their conduct will present a beautiful and 
attractive aspect to the observer. But the motive which ani- 



Justification by Faith. 205 

mates it all, and especially the unbelief which discounts and 
discredits the grace and the infinite merit of a divine 
Redeemer, and his offered gift of eternal life, strips the 
heroic record of self-righteous energy, of all the spiritual 
glory which is supposed to be in it. It involves the incon- 
ceivable folly of seeking to gather together a ransom price 
in discredited bank-notes, when the benignity of the Lord 
of the universe offers as the free gift of his own grace a merit 
whose value would be only faintly shadowed out by the image 
of a flawless diamond as large as the solid earth. The riches 
of Christ are unsearchable. 

1. But to a more specific and orderly statement of the com- 
plete argument against the theory of justification by works 
of human obedience. The first obvious consideration, show- 
ing the absurdity of the justification of a sinner by his own 
works, lies in the fact, that justification, involving a com- 
plete satisfaction to all the claims of the law, requires of 
the transgressor a full satisfaction of those penal claims which 
his sin has developed. That penalty is death ; it is spiritual 
and eternal, as well as physical death ; and it is a contradic- 
tory predication to assert that a sinner can satisfy it and yet 
be saved. He can satisfy it by enduring it, according to its 
terms of time and substance — that is, by enduring it forever ; 
and in no other way. But that sets the hope of salvation 
entirely aside. That is to say, the justification of a trans- 
gressor of law by his own works of endurance and obedience 
is an intrinsic contradiction and absurdity. So impossible 
is the sinner's satisfaction of the penalty of the law, the effort 
has been strenuously made to set up the theory of a substitute 
for the penalty, under various modifications. But to suppose 
a substitution for the penalty, not only involves a change in 
an unchangeable law, but prevents the possibility of justifica- 
tion altogether. That status under law cannot emerge except 



206 Justification by Faith. 

by the fulfilling of the law; and of necessity is wholly pre- 
vented by any substitute for the law. Moreover, the substi- 
tute must be equivalent to the substituted claim, or justice 
is sacrificed by the substitution; and there seems to be no 
reason why a sinner might not satisfy an infinite penalty if 
he could satisfy a fair equivalent for it. Obviously he could 
satisfy neither. Yet more: the penalty is just, and it is 
inadmissible to suppose any substitution for intrinsic justice. 
Substitution of persons is possible; substitution for justice 
is absurd. Justice is set aside when anything is put in the 
place of it. Christ satisfied justice before he undertook to 
release the transgressor. Hence if man, undertaking to 
justify himself, is not able to satisfy the penal claims of the 
law, on any principle compatible with his own deliverance, 
justification to a sinner by his own works of endurance is 
manifestly impossible. Eternal endurance is the only form 
of the penalty applied to finite beings, because no finite being 
can satisfy an infinite penalty in a limited period. Satisfac- 
tion to such a penal claim by any sinning creature, con- 
sistently with his own salvation, is manifestly impossible. 

2. The second consideration showing the impossibility of 
a sinner's justification by works, is that justification as 
already shown, is only possible to any creature, on the sup- 
position of a covenant. But man by his sin has already 
broken the covenant ; and it has come to an end by the incur- 
ment of its forfeitures; it no longer exists. The law now 
binds as law, not as covenant; and the removal of the cove- 
nant character superinduced upon the law, and the return 
of the law to its natural basis, has swept away the possibility 
of justification. The broken covenant asserts its penal claims, 
just as a human contract exacts its forfeitures, although the 
contract has come to an end by the failure of its terms ; the 
penalty has been incurred, and must be satisfied; but as a 



Justification by Faith. 207 

conventional compact carrying the possibility of winning the 
specified reward, it is wholly abolished; and justification 
under it has become utterly impracticable. 

3. Yet another consideration determines the same conclu- 
sion. Admitting that a being who has sinned and corrupted 
his moral energies with an indelible stain is capable of a per- 
fect subsequent obedience — a supposition grossly absurd — 
yet even on this supposition, justification, even by such a 
perfect obedience of a depraved soul, is still an absolute im- 
possibility. He has already sinned before his perfect obedi^ 
ence began. Those sins must be cancelled by some species 
of satisfaction ; but the present current demands of the law, 
although by the supposition he is able to meet them perfectly, 
exact all that he can do to meet them. He is bound to love 
God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind, 
and with all his strength, at every moment of his existence ; 
and, even on the absurd supposition conceded, his perfect dis- 
charge of current obligations can yield no surplus service 
to cancel or affect in any way the sins which he had already 
committed. Doing all that it is possible for him to do to 
meet the obligations of the present, he can do no more to 
qualify the sins of the past. Justification by his own w T orks 
is by consequence impossible, even on the supposed possibility 
of a perfect obedience. How much less, then, by an obedience 
less than perfect, which is an obedience marred by fresh trans- 
gressions ? This imperfect obedience is, in fact, all that the 
advocate of justification by works has the face to claim; he 
dares not claim a perfect obedience, which, nevertheless, would 
fail to accomplish his purpose, even if it were attainable. 

4. But going farther yet in concession to this consummate 
folly of a sinner's self-justification, we may admit the extrava- 
gant absurdity that a depraved being can not only render a 
perfect obedience to the law, but do surplus duty, still the 



208 Justification by Faith. 

possibility of his justifying himself by his own works is as 
hopeless as ever. Preceptive obedience can never satisfy 
penal claims. The debt to penalty is an obligation to suffering 
which cannot be paid by obedience to precept. ~No obligation 
to suffering can be paid by anything but what the obligation 
demands. The debt of a transgressor is the twofold claim 
of precept and penalty; and the debt to the precept cannot 
be paid by obedience to the penalty, nor the debt to the penalty 
by obedience to the precept. Both are data determined by 
intrinsic justice; each is absolutely distinct from the other; 
and they cannot be commuted or exchanged one for the other. 
Even works of supererogatory preceptive obedience cannot sat- 
isfy penal claims, which have an intrinsically righteous force ; 
and the utter impracticability of justification by works re- 
ceives another superfluous demonstration. 

5. But, in point of fact, so far from a sinning moral agent 
being able to render either a perfect or a supererogatory obedi- 
ence, he is not able to render any obedience such as the law 
prescribes. All his actions fall short in some regards of what 
a perfect law requires. This is the inevitable result of even 
a single sin ; for sin in act always recoils at once on the moral 
nature of the transgressor. The fountain of his moral 
energies becomes defiled, and nothing but a stream of defiled 
action can flow from it. The more sin in act is multiplied, 
the more the personal moral nature of the sinning actor is 
depraved. !N"ow, bring into the calculation the real extent 
of the law which measures sin. The law is spiritual, requir- 
ing not only conformity in outward action, but in all the 
activities of the soul. The law is universal, extending its 
jurisdiction over every movement of the soul to which a moral 
quality can attach. It requires holiness in every thought, 
feeling, affection, desire, impulse, and permanent trait of 
character. The law is complete in its embrace of all the 



Justification by Faith. 209 

energies of the creature subject to it. It requires the obedi- 
ence it demands to be perfect in degree, as well as universal 
in its scope. It legalizes not one single departure from its 
prescriptions under any circumstances whatever. It makes 
no allowance for infirmity, or habit, or violent temptation; 
and whatever it requires, it requires always, without relaxa- 
tion or end. JSTow, when we consider that a sinner, with an 
unholy nature, can only energize in unholiness ; when we 
remember man's proneness to evil, his blindness, weakness, 
and positive depravity of will ; when we reflect on the power 
of the evil influences all around him, the temptations of the 
world addressed to the senses, and the tremendous subtlety 
of wit and cunning by which all these seductive elements are 
manipulated by Satan and his trained seducers — the supposi- 
tion that a sinful man could work out his own justification 
under the law, is the veriest madness that ever deluded the 
brain of a lunatic. 

6. If justification by works were possible, then the whole 
scheme of redemption by the work of Christ is super fluous,, 
and by consequence, false. Paul tells us in so many words, "If 
righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain ;"' 
and asserts, "If there had been a law given which could have 
given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.' 7 
It is certain if man had been able to secure his own justifica- 
tion, there was no real necessity for the intervention of Christ. 
It is a fixed law of the divine administration to do nothing for 
man which he is able to do for himself. The doctrine of justi- 
fication by works, making the work of the Saviour superfluous, 
makes it false. Both the wisdom and the love of God is a 
guarantee that his Son would never have been subjected to 
such trials had not the necessity for it in the accomplishment 
of the gracious purposes of God been absolute and uncom- 
promising. 
14 



210 Justification by Faith. 

7. Once more: the justification of a sinner by his own 
works is a natural absurdity. No law can justify any but the 
doers of it; but the doctrine under investigation makes it 
possible for the law to justify its violators. ~No law can utter 
a contradictory judgment. Such is the logical nature of 
Paul's argument in the Epistle to the Romans. He presents 
it in several slightly differing forms. He says in one place, 
"By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified: 
for by the law is the knowledge of sin." This is the same 
thing as to say, "That which reveals the fact of sin already 
committed, does, by that very disclosure, demonstrate the im- 
possibility of justification under the law." It reveals a breach 
of the law ; and justification, which presupposes a fulfilment 
of the law, becomes impossible. A law which condemns, 
affirms its own incapacity to justify. Again, the apostle de- 
clares "the law worketh w T rath." How can it work wrath, and 
at the same time work peace and reconciliation? Again, he 
affirms to the Galatian church, "They that are under the law 
are under the curse." He infers, in the same oblique but 
resistless manner, that it is impossible for us to be justified 
by the same instrument by which we are cursed. 

8. The whole tenor of the gospel, as a deliverance by grace, 
is conclusive upon the doctrine of justification by works. 
Paul tells us that by the salvation of the gospel "all boasting 
is excluded." But if a man, by his own wise and resolute 
virtue, is able to resist the mighty combination against him, 
and win the prize of eternal life, by the strong hand, out of 
the utmost endeavors of Satan and his mighty legions, he 
will be entitled to boast. He will be a hero, in comparison 
with whom the greatest heroes of human history will sink 
into insignificance. But no discordant song will mar the 
exclusive ascription of praise to the Lamb of God, as the sole 
author of salvation to the sinners of the human family. 



Justification by Faith. 211 

9. In the last place, we meet the grand objection which the 
pride and self-righteousness of the human heart makes to the 
doctrine of justification by grace. It is asserted with per- 
sistent energy that the divorce of human salvation from works 
of personal obedience is to unsettle the basis of moral action, 
to destroy the necessity for good works altogether, and to 
establish a liberty to sin. The expression, "Divorce of salva- 
tion from good works," is misleading in the highest degree. 
~No body of Christian people separate salvation from good 
works ; such works are made an indispensable part of the 
salvation of grace. Good works are the necessary fruits of 
salvation by grace, according to the evangelical view; they 
are the ground and reason, the root and cause of salvation, 
according to the unevaugelical school in all its branches ; and 
the difference between them is not that one of these parties 
disowns goods works, while the other maintains them; but 
the difference lies in the virtue and efficacy assigned to works 
in procuring salvation by the one theory, and in the develop- 
ment of a salvation already freely bestowed by grace on the 
other. The difference touches the position assigned to works, 
not to the necessity for them, which is equally demanded by 
both, though for a different reason and end. We therefore 
reply to this objection, in the first place, that one of the 
inevitable effects of justification is to secure a guarantee of 
integrity, by securing a legal protection against a fall and a 
positive title to the reward, which title carries the assurance 
of all things necessary to put the title into practical effect. 
We reply, in the second place, that the removal of a thing 
because incompetent to produce a given result, is by no means 
to remove it altogether, as incompetent to effect other results 
of undeniable importance. Paul says that "what the law 
could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God send- 
ing his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, 



212 Justification by Faith. 

condemned sin in the flesh." This incompetence of the law to 
work out a special effect, because it was weak, not in itself, 
but through the weakness of fallen human nature, is simply 
set aside as an impracticable basis of justification; and the 
obedience to the law, which never could be relaxed, was 
sought, for the attainment of other purposes, for which it was 
not disabled of its usefulness by human weakness. The law 
is not abolished; it cannot be abolished or altered; its 
removal as a special covenant, which made justification pos- 
sible, leaves the law still in its natural and unchangeable 
relation as a rule of action, although it has ceased to be a 
basis for justification. The law, therefore, asserts its claim 
to obedience; and at the same time denies and repudiates 
what is so persistently asserted of it, any claim to be a basis 
of justification. We have seen repeatedly that the law, as 
the basis of a covenant, rendered justification possible; but 
the law, simply on its natural basis rendered justification 
impossible. The change, then, of the covenant character 
superinduced upon the law, by the failure of the covenant 
or the introduction of a new covenant on the basis of grace^ 
restored the law to its basis as law; and thereby the law 
utterly repudiates the possibility of justification by works 
of obedience to its precepts. The law, as well as the gospel, 
repudiates the possibility of justification by works. But the 
return of the law to its natural claims is fully vindicated 
in its usefulness, although it has ceased to be a basis for 
justification ; its authority, the extent of its jurisdiction, the 
necessity of obedience, and the stimulus to holy living are 
unimpaired. Man is, and must ever be, bound to righteous- 
ness of life ; but not with a view to the impracticable end of 
securing his justification. Every creature must conform to 
the law of its being in order to secure its well-being. The 
object, but not the obligation, of obedience is changed. The 



Justification by Faith. 213 

law serves many a high and noble end, even when no longer 
practicable as a basis of justification. It is a schoolmaster to 
lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith ; it defines 
duty ; it binds to its discharge ; it threatens sin ; it discloses 
the defects and the spiritual needs of the soul; it expounds 
to the dull sense of the sin-deadened soul its perishing need 
of a Saviour. Surely the utility of the law is not discredited 
when it works such beneficial results, even though, through 
the sinful weakness of man himself, it is wholly incompetent 
to admit of the justification of the sinner by his own faulty 
obedience to the law. 

Yet again: the development of good works is not at all 
dependent upon any theory of their necessity to justification. 
They are amply provided for in the theory of justification 
by grace. Salvation by grace is in its very nature salvation 
from sin; the very name of the Saviour marked him as a 
Saviour from sin, and a salvation from sin is a salvation 
to obedience or good works. It is absurd to deny good works 
as the inevitable fruits of a salvation which is a salvation 
from sin. This deliverance originates in grace, and is wholly 
accomplished by grace ; but the very end and purpose of the 
whole design is to lead the trangressor back to obedience to 
the law, which inexorably conditions his well-being; or, in 
other words, the end and purpose of salvation by grace is the 
development of good works. Its formula is believe and then 
do ; the formula of salvation by works is, first do, and then 
trust. Would any one be so venturesome as to say that there 
was no necessity of grapes to the vine-grower, because the 
cluster cannot serve the purpose and the functions of the roots 
of the vine ? The vine is rooted in the soil ; the roots are 
very different in appearance from the cluster; one unac- 
quainted with the mysteries of the vine could scarcely com- 
prehend the relation of the golden and purple cluster to the 



214 Justification by Faith. 

unsightly root and the dirty ' soil. Yet there is no cluster 
without the root and the soil; and the production of the 
grapes was the end in view in the whole endeavor. What an 
absurdity to say there was no necessity for the fruit, because 
it was impossible for the cluster to perform the functions of 
the root and the soil ? Good works are the cluster ; grace is 
the root and the soil. A ticket on a railroad is not the price 
paid for the privilege of travel; but it serves an excellent 
purpose in showing that the price has been paid, for the 
ticket could not be procured unless the money had been paid. 
The ticket is the product of the money, and, therefore, proof 
of payment. Good works are the ticket ; grace is the money 
that buys it; and without the money the ticket could not 
be procured. The work of Christ pays the price of human 
redemption; good works are the certain results of that 
redemption when it takes effect on any particular soul — "by 
their fruits ye shall know them" — for the inevitable effect 
of his salvation is salvation from sin; and where the fruit 
is wanting, it is proof that the remedy has not taken effect. 
The apostle tells us we are "justified freely by his grace," 
in order that "we may be holy and without blame before him 
in love," according to the election of grace. So long as a 
sinner stands on legal ground, and all his hopes are con- 
ditioned upon the purity and perfection of his own obedience, 
anxiety and fear of coining short, and the perpetual com- 
plaint of conscience make it impossible for him to love God 
with really affectionate feelings, or to regard him with any 
other feelings than dread and secret dislike. But when he 
is justified freely by the grace and the righteousness of God 
himself — a righteousness which is perfect in its power to 
justify — his fears are removed, his affections are excited, and 
his obedience flows freely and affectionately, unrestrained by 
terror and undimmed by selfishness. He breathes the spirit 



Justification by Faith. 215 

of adoption, and draws near to his once offended Sovereign, 
saying, "Abba," "Father." 

The rule of judgment by which many men think to escape 
a judgment of their characters and conduct by a strict rule 
of law is that of a supposed balanced estimate of their faults 
and virtues ; and if, on the whole, the virtues overbalance the 
faults, they will be pronounced good men, and released from 
all condemnation and danger. But this is not the way in 
which human justice deals with breakers of law. It is never 
admitted, as a legitimate defence of a forger or the defaulting 
official of a bank, that for many years the defaulter had been 
honest, and that his honest acts were greatly more numerous 
than the few acts of dishonesty which he had committed. One 
murder is not esteemed to be condoned by many years of 
regard for the life of neighbors. It is felt that the many 
acts of conformity to law were only what the law continuously 
required of him, and that the single act of crime was a breach 
of law, for which answer must be made on peril of setting 
aside the law. Law can only look to its requirements, and 
to the fact of conformity or violence to them. If a man 
commits an offence against law, it is no rational or legal plea 
that in many instances he had obeyed it. Preponderating 
good character may be a plea in some cases in mitigating a 
judicial sentence, or in appeal to executive mercy, by creating 
the presumption that the crime was not the product of per- 
manent evil dispositions, but of great or sudden provocation ; 
but it is not equivalent to a plea of justification; it cannot 
bar responsibility under the law for a specific criminal action ; 
and the reason is that the only rule of judgment for the magis- 
trate to follow is the positive prescription of the law, and 
not a rule of balanced judgments on the view of the whole 
life of the criminal. Xeither will the Almighty Judge pro- 
ceed on this rule of balanced judgments ; he will judge by the 



216 Justification by Faith. 

law and the facts. If man is a sinner at all, the justice of 
the Judge must judge according to the fact in the case; it 
must call a spade, a spade ; a circle, a circle, and a lie, a lie. 
The judgment must be graduated by the fact in every case, 
and the fact measured by the law; and nothing can either 
qualify the judgment or set up an offset. Now, when we 
call up the other ingredients of the case ; when we remember 
that all human virtues, so called, when judged by the real 
law which is to govern the judgment — the absolutely holy, 
spiritual, and perfect law of the Almighty God — are faulty, 
the absurdity of an offset of faults by such virtues becomes 
perfectly transparent. There can be no offset of criminal 
acts by acts of a real but lesser criminality. Such a rule of 
judgment upon character and conduct necessarily takes the 
case out of the operation of law, and is wholly incompatible 
with a just administration of law. It is a far higher relief 
which the infinite grace of God provides when it provides 
for a real justification through the righteousness of God 
which is by faith. 

Finally, it is said that there is a positive contradiction 
between the teaching of Paul and the teaching of James on 
the matter of justification. Paul teaches at great length, and 
with unequivocal precision, that "we are justified by faith 
without the deeds of the law." James teaches with equal 
precision that "we are not justified by faith without the 
works of the law, and that a man is justified by works, 
and not by faith only." The verbal opposition is plain 
enough ; but there is no real opposition between them. Faith 
is the only instrument of justification — this is the doctrine 
of Paul; but this faith which justifies also produces good 
works — this is the doctrine of James. If the faith which 
justifies does also produce certain other effects as invariably 
as it does the effect of justifying, this faith may be truly 



Justification" by Faith. 217 

said not to justify without works. If it fails to produce good 
works, it will also fail to justify. The justification will not 
take place without the works, because the twofold effect of the 
faith is never found separate. Consequently James says, "If 
you show me your faith without your works, I will show you 
my faith by my works." A liquid manure poured round the 
roots of a fruit tree may kill the grubbs which may be threat- 
ening the life of the tree ; it may be the only thing which will 
kill them speedily, and at the same time it may greatly stimu- 
late the growth of the tree and the perfection of its fruit. It 
would be perfectly true and proper to say that the application 
alone killed the enemies of the tree, and at the same time to 
say that that destruction was not the only effect produced by 
it. There is a subtle play upon the word "alone" ; it is 
properly applied in the one case to faith as a cause; it is 
properly denied in the other to the effects of faith. Faith, as 
the instrumental cause of justification, is alone in producing 
that effect ; but it is not alone as producing that effect only ; 
it produces other effects also, and it is never found separated 
from these incidental effects. If separated from these effects 
it is dead, being alone ; and as dead, it fails to produce justifi- 
cation whenever it fails to produce good works ; all its effects 
are found together. It is a fact of wide application that 
causes designed to produce a given effect, and alone capable 
of producing that effect, may nevertheless produce other 
effects designed or undesigned. It would be truly and justly 
said of such a cause that it only produced the chief effect; 
yet did not produce that effect only ; it produced other effects 
also. So much for James' first presentation of the relation 
between faith and works. In the second presentation, where 
he says, "By works a man is justified, and not by faith only," 
the relation of faith and works in the matter of justification 
is more pointedly and even paradoxically stated. It may be 



218 Justification by Faith. 

illustrated by a business transaction. A man is sued for 
debt; be pleads payment. If be can prove that, tbe court 
will justify bim for not paying it again. But be must prove 
payment. If be does prove it, tbe evidence which proves it 
does exert an important influence on his justification, not be- 
cause the evidence pays any part of the debt, but because it 
proves that the debt has been paid. The evidence takes a 
part in the justification, but a totally different sort of a part 
from that taken by the money paid on the debt. Faith alone 
conveys the money which ransoms the sinner, which is the 
righteousness of Christ; but works prove that the payment 
has been made, and thus exerts a valuable influence on the 
justifying sentence of the judge, though of an entirely dif- 
ferent character, both in legal and moral value, from the 
consideration which paid the debt. Common sense draws a 
vital distinction between the money that paid the debt and 
the evidence which proved that the payment had been made, 
although both are valuable in their place. Faith justifies 
by paying the debt: works justify by proving payment. 
Separate from works, which are its inevitable effects, faith 
is dead, being alone; and a dead faith is as incapable of 
justifying as it is of producing good works ; but a faith alive 
enough to justify will inevitably produce good works or holi- 
ness of heart and life. Without works faith secures justifica- 
tion by conveying the righteousness of the Son of God ; faith 
alone carries this great result; but it at the same time con- 
veys other results — the sanctifying influence of the Word and 
the Spirit of God, thus securing holiness of heart and life. 
It is, therefore, perfectly consistent to say, with Paul, "We 
are justified by faith without works," and to say, with James, 
that "we are not justified by a faith without works." The 
paradox is purely verbal ; there is not the slightest opposition 
in the logical substance of the statements. 



Justification by Faith. 219 

The force of this whole argument against justification by 
works of personal obedience to moral law, as asserted by all 
classes of objectors, is so irresistible that the Unitarian, or 
rather Socinian party, are compelled to resort to the idea 
of a pardon by a high act of supreme executive power to 
release the sinner whose personal obedience is not complete 
enough to effect his acquittal. That is to say, the guardian 
of a ward's estate, by an act of power, confiscates a part of 
the estate for the benefit of the creditor without paying the 
confiscated value to the estate. Had he done this, his gift to 
the creditor would have been a noble action ; but as it is, it 
is an act of fraud and gross injustice. Xo such action can be 
imputed to the sinless God. The whole theory as held by 
this class of opponents of justification freely by the grace of 
God is not only illogical, but involves the character of the 
supreme Lord of the universe — that great Judge, who will 
do right — in grave reproach. It is altogether inadmissible. 

The theory of justification by works, as held by the large 
class of prelatists, sacramentarians, and adherents to a human 
priesthood are compelled to enlarge the boundaries of the 
human merit which is brought in to supplement the convicted 
deficiency of individual fidelity to the law. Consequently, 
they postulate a great treasury of complex merit, under the 
control of the church, on which drafts can be drawn for the 
benefit of the individual who is so fortunate or so faithful 
as to merit and gain it. The merit of the divine Kedeemer 
is not altogether excluded from this complex ; it is construed 
as a part, and an efficient part, of it. Any just or approximate 
estimate of the merit of the Son of God would take it as by 
itself all-sufficient to secure the justification of the lost sinners 
of the human race. Any attempt to qualify it by the associa- 
tion of the merits of any other being, human or angelic, would 
seem to be as impertinent as it would be superfluous. Xever- 



220 Justification by Faith. 

theless, the merits of the saints, the Virgin, the apostles, the 
martyrs, the heads of some religious orders, a nondescript 
rabble of consecrated females, are all mixed up with the 
transcendent merit of a divine Saviour, to make up a reliable 
bank on which to draw. Then, to crown the whole infamy 
of the betrayal of the great gospel ground of hope, the grant 
of a saving draft upon this mighty accumulation of merit 
to any individual sinner who would have an interest in it, is 
-conditioned to a controlling extent upon his own personal 
merit, developed by his own good works, which are measured, 
to a vast extent by his compliances with churchly observances, 
as well as by his acts of moral obedience. All these human 
merits which are thrown into the great church treasury are 
absolutely incompetent when brought to the measurement of 
the divine law; or, in other words, are absolutely defects, 
instead of being able to support the weight laid upon them, 
and any dependence on them will prove a broken reed ; they 
only reflect dishonor on the redemption of Christ, and gravely 
hinder its application to the lost sinner. The association of 
such grounds of hope with the merit of Christ, in point of 
fact destroys the redemption of grace; for Paul expressly 
testifies that if salvation be of works, it is no more of grace ; 
and if it be of grace, it is no more of works. The broad con- 
clusion is inevitable that the two theories of justification by 
works and the justification by faith in the righteousness of 
Christ are utterly incompatible; and that whosoever risks 
his soul on the merits of any mere human being, or beings, 
whatever, will perish in the day when the divine Judge shall 
lay justice to the line and righteousness to the plummet. 



SUBSTITUTION AND REPRESEN- 
TATION. 

"But how shall man be just with God?" — Job ix. 2. 

OUR last discussion settled the question as to the possi- 
bility of a sinner's justification by his own works. 
Since man cannot justify himself, it is clear that if he is to be 
justified at all, it must be done for him by some one else; 
he must find a substitute; some other being must take his 
place under the law, and do for him what he could not do 
for himself. But a number of questions at once spring up 
around this suggestion. Who can say whether a substitution 
was allowable in the first place, or possible in the second place,. 
or whether it could be made so available, in the third place r . 
as to meet fairly and fully all the demands of the case ? Cer- 
tainly the natural reason of no creature, man or angel, could 
say whether any substitution was in justice permissible. All 
that natural moral intelligence could decide upon such a 
question would be to decide it in the negative, for natural 
reason can only see the unchanging liability, in justice, of the 
wrong-doer to answer without relief for his own wrong-doing. 
It was a question for the supreme power alone to determine 
whether substitution was in justice allowable at all. But sup- 
posing it allowable in theory, who could possibly put the 
theory into effect ? Who could take a sinner's place for such 
a purpose, as working out his justification? A friend may 
take the place of a contractor who is failing to carry out his 
contract, and finish it for his benefit on just and legal prin- 
ciples. But this implies the ability of the interposing friend 



222 Substitution and Representation. 

to meet the case. But who can take a sinner's place under 
a broken law, encounter its penal curse, and fulfil all the pre- 
ceptive requirements for a perfect obedience ? No man could 
do it — no combination of men could do it. No angel in 
heaven; no legion or cohort of the choicest chivalry of the 
heavenly hosts could do it; and for the same reason. No 
creature could bear the pressure of the penalty; it would 
wither him into a devil or crush him into annihilation ! No 
creature could meet the preceptive any more than the penal 
claims for the benefit of any other creature, for the very 
clear and imperative reason that all the rational and morally 
responsible creatures of Almighty God are bound by the same 
law of moral obligation. That law binds each and all to his 
own service, with all his mind, and all his heart, with all 
his soul, and with all his strength. All that they can do is 
indispensable to meet their own obligations ; they can do no 
surplus duty for the benefit of others. No creature, and no 
combination of creatures, can fill the function of a substitute. 
The inference then moves to a startling conclusion: since 
neither man nor angel could serve as the substitute to work 
out the justification of the ungodly, the inference is resistless, 
either that the whole scheme is impracticable, or else the 
Almighty God himself must undertake it. The very idea is 
startling beyond expression. How can this be ? Who could 
dare to make such a suggestion ? What awful paradoxes seem 
to start up to reflection at the bare notion ! That the infinite 
and holy God, the offended sovereign against whom the innu- 
merable sins of a rebellious race have been committed, should 
appear as the legal substitute of the lost victim of his own 
folly, and undertake to deliver him, not by the strong hand of 
sovereign power and by the waiver of justice, but by redeem- 
ing him from the curse of the law — by paying down such a 
ransom as would satisfy all claims against him. How could 



Substitution and Representation. 223 

such a thing he done? It involved a series of the most 
astounding conditions. The divine Substitute must for the 
period of his redemptive work lay aside his matchless glory. 
He must become identified with the fallen creature for whom 
lie undertakes. He must assume the legal liabilities which he 
came to satisfy. His work must be real, and completely 
effective, to meet every just claim upon his clientile. He 
must endure the penalties of the law. He must become obe- 
dient to his own commands. Sin must be laid on him; he 
must bear it — oh ! awful thought — in his own body on the 
tree ; and by making a full satisfaction of all the demands 
of justice and the law, to work out that righteousness which 
alone could ground a decree of justification. It is obvious, 
from the very statement of the case, that none but God could 
ever have originated such a thought or entertained it as a 
possibility. The very conception is as exclusively the product 
of God's own thought as its execution was of God's own will. 
Yet as soon as the idea is framed, we can see how complete 
is the logical sufficiency of the expedient; how fully the 
mighty issue is met by a mightier energy. The revealed 
plan of salvation is not less a masterpiece of wisdom than 
of grace. 

But supposing justification made possible so far as it is 
involved in a competent substitute, how could it be made 
available for a justification, dependent upon the fulfilment 
of all the claims of the law upon the transgressors who have 
already broken it ? The penalty had already been incurred, 
and that claim must be met. This imposed the necessity for 
such a combination with the divine Person as would make 
suffering and actual death possible. The precept must be 
fulfilled, and the divine Substitute must become subject to his 
own laws. Justification is the determination of the regular 
administration of law by the judicial decree of a judge. The 



224 Substitution and Representation. 

divine Substitute must, therefore, come under such a legal 
relation, both to the law and to the condemned subjects of 
the law, as will allow of his official action in their behalf 
being a real representative action on their part and for their 
legal release. That release must be decreed by the sentence 
of the law itself, pronouncing its claims to be fulfilled and 
satisfied, or no justification can be developed. These essential 
incidents attached to the work which the divine Substitute 
must do, give us a strong impression of the extraordinary 
nature of that work and the difficulties inherent in it. It is 
easy to see the grace involved in the substitution of another 
m the dangerous place of a condemned breaker of law; but 
it is not so easy to see the conformity to justice and the 
law itself which is, and must be, involved in it. How, or 
on what principle, can what is done by one person be made, 
in strict justice and rigorous conformity to law, imputable 
to another person ? It is clearly just to impute his own acts 
to an actor — that is, to hold him accountable for them. But 
it is not so easy to see how it is just and may be necessary 
to hold one accountable for the acts of another. It is plain 
that it is not just to hold one person accountable for the acts 
of another when there is no connection between them what- 
ever. But when there is such a connection between them 
as will justly or necessarily involve both in the consequences 
of the act of one of them, it is just. There are two principles 
upon which this distribution of responsibility can occur : one, 
which is based upon the law of nature, and is more properly 
a general interchange of mutual liabilities within certain 
bounds ; and the other, a strictly legal responsibility, limited 
strictly to the parties legally united in one common legal- 
liability. These will be explained and compared in the course 
of time. It may be remarked here, in illustration of the 
latter of these two principles, that no law, or just administra- 



Substitution and Representation. 225 

tion of law, can, on the ordinary independent relations of 
business life, exact the payment of one man's debts from 
another. But there is a -principle upon which it would not 
only be just to make one man pay the debts of another, but 
on which it would be positively unjust not to do it. It is the 
principle which lies at the foundation of security for debt, 
of all agencies in civil and political life, in all diplomatic and 
governmental relations — in short, in all transactions in which 
one man acts as the agent or representative of another. It is 
the principle universally recognized in the administration of 
law and civil justice which is expressed in the legal maxim, 
"Facit per alium, facit per se" It is the principle of repre- 
sentation ; and it is universally recognized that the act of a 
just and legal representative would be unjustly construed, if 
it was made exclusively his own, and not recognized as mainly 
the act of the party for whom and by whose authority he 
acted. A substitute, clothed with the character of a repre- 
sentative, can act for another, and so bind the party repre- 
sented, that every just civil court would decree the full lia- 
bility of one man for the acts of another. A government 
agent does not act himself, or in a private capacity; he acts 
for his government ; he acts in a public character ; he is the 
representative of his government, and the responsibility is- 
not personal to himself, but lies upon his government. Ana 
agent for an insurance or any other business company binds 
his company by his official acts ; and injustice would be done 
if the agent alone was held responsible, and not the company 
for whom he acts. It would be unjust to compel one man to 
pay the debts of another when standing in no relation to each 
other; but it is not unjust when one is the legal security 
of the other; for in that case both are bound for the debt. 
The legal relation of security exists between them. In all 

these cases, a lawful relation exists between the parties ; and 
15 



226 Substitution and Representation. 

without this relation, and this representative character, no 
just responsibility could exist. But if such a relation does 
exist, it is not only consistent with justice, but demanded 
by justice, to make one party responsible for the acts of 
another. Let it be noted that this effectual representative 
relation, which creates an obligatory bond upon one person 
for the acts of another is a positive creation, the creature of 
a positive compact or agreed covenant; that it includes in 
its scope and consequences only the parties to the compact, 
and no others than those who are embraced in the scope and 
purview of the arrangement. The most perfect form of this 
covenant by which the actions of one person are imputed to 
another, is the personal choice of the representative by the 
party represented. A less conspicuously, yet substantially 
equally just form of it, is the appointment of counsel for a 
prisoner, or the guardian of a ward, or the administrator of 
an estate by a civil court. But whether the creature of a 
voluntary personal choice, or the appointment of a just 
authority, the representative character is of legal force ; and 
the just official acts of the representative are binding on the 
party represented. This species of arrangement is the basis 
of what is called perfect imputation. As embodied in the 
divine administration, this species has been subject to very 
serious criticism ; but it is as just in the divine administra- 
tion as it is in the administration of human affairs, and as 
capable of vindication. 

The second principle on which some are involved in the acts 
of others is subject to the same criticism to a certain extent, 
and with less obvious and more difficult, but with the same 
substantial capability of vindication. This is the basis of 
what is called imperfect imputation, and is founded upon the 
laws of nature, and not upon a personal compact or an authori- 
tative appointment. It is verbally described in the second 



Substitution and Kepkesentation. 227 

commandment of the Decalogue in the words, "Visiting the 
iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third 
and fourth generation of them that hate me, and showing 
mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my 
commandments." It is practically described, in many in- 
stances developed, in the actual administration of the divine 
providence. As, for instance, the children of a drunkard, 
and all other members of his family, are involved in the 
consequences of a father's vice. The family of a thief, or a 
murderer, or a spendthrift, or any other disgraceful criminal, 
are involved in the consequences of his criminal acts. He is 
not the chosen or appointed representative of the family, or 
else their implication in his acts would be clear, and the jus- 
tice of their concurrent suffering would be approved to the 
sense of justice in every observer. As it is, there is a very 
qualified sense of the justice of their implication in the un- 
happy consequences of faults in which they had no causative 
concern. But it is felt that the result is determined by the 
laws of nature which have bound them together; and how- 
ever it may be regretted, and however it may perplex the 
sense of justice, it is unavoidable. This is true ; but the 
human understanding sees a more satisfactory solution. It 
is to be noted that this implication of doubtful propriety is 
by no means confined to the criminal acts of the head of the 
household alone; it is equally effective in the criminal acts 
of a mother, or a brother, or a sister, and even of more or 
less remote collateral relations. A spendthrift son, not pro- 
perly restrained, often reduces a family to want, and all 
the other members of the household suffer the consequences 
of a folly in which they had no part. A criminal daughter 
often brings shame and loss of social privilege on the rest of 
the family. Let it also be noticed that the suffering produced 
by criminal conduct in a single member of a family extends 



228 Substitution and Repbesentation. 

into the collateral connections of the household, and widens 
through the families of relations more or less remote, and 
even of friends who are not relations by blood or affinity, 
until it loses its painful eifects along the distant boundary 
which shades off into a distant public too remote to feel any 
touch of the distress. It is clear that this principle of im- 
plicating others in the acts for which they are not at all 
morally responsible, is very different from the principle of 
representation. It is based, not upon agreement or appoint- 
ment, but upon the law of nature. It does not proceed upon 
the inflexible requirements of the natural headship only, 
which is necessarily developed in a procreative race of beings ; 
for it is evident that not only are children implicated in the 
sins of their fathers, but fathers are often implicated in the 
sins of their children; and that the wave of distress is not 
confined to the immediate circle of the criminal's household, 
but spreads over collateral connections to a greater or less 
degree. It is the result of a certain general interlock of 
mutual liabilities growing out of the procreative constitution 
imposed upon the human race of creatures by the wisdom and 
will of the Creator. If the principle of representation is at 
all involved in this constitution, it would appear to be a 
mutual or reciprocal representation, extending from the 
fathers to the children, and from the children to the fathers, 
and intertwining itself through the social unit created by the 
natural or voluntary connections of the family. The same 
principle extends to larger aggregations of localities, nations, 
and races of men, and to the human race as a whole in some 
respects. It has been a question keenly disputed which of 
these two principles on which, on both of which, it is evident 
that some are implicated in the sins of others, on which of 
them the divine administration proceeded in regard to the fall 
into moral evil and the redemption of grace. Two great 



Substitution and Representation. 229 

schools of theology are based, respectively, on these two prin- 
ciples — the one adopting the basis of the imperfect imputa- 
tion, the other the basis of the perfect imputation. We do 
not intend to go fully into the question thus raised ; we shall 
state very briefly the chief considerations on which it appears 
that the scriptures place the covenant with Adam and the 
covenant with Christ on the principle of a strict representa- 
tive substitution, and consequently on the basis of a perfect 
imputation. 

In the account given of the transactions in the garden, it 
is plain that a positive verbal arrangement was made. There 
would have been no need or propriety for formal stipulations 
in words, if the connection of Adam with his descendants 
was to rest solely on the laws of nature ; a bare statement of 
the fact that such would be the case would have been sufficient, 
even if such a statement was necessary. But more than that 
was explicitly settled. Formal requisitions were made; dis- 
tinct action was required and forbidden ; explicit conditions 
laid down; positive menaces were uttered on one condition, 
carrying a positive promise on another condition. A specific 
action, the eating of a fruit, was made the test of obedience ; 
on the mere unqualified basis of moral law, no such specifica- 
tion was appropriate. One of the old prophets calls it a "cove- 
nant." It is made the logical parallel of the covenant with 
Christ : "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be 
made alive." The covenant of grace was not a natural deter- 
mination of natural law, but a positive personal compact 
between the Father and the Son, and as such reveals the same 
character in its parallel, the covenant with Adam. An 
arrangement based exclusively on the laws of nature, and the 
natural headship of Adam, would have established the test 
of obedience in the indiscriminate and miscellaneous duties 
of morality in general, and not in the one positive prohibition 



230 Substitution and Representation. 

of eating, or not eating, a particular fruit. The proof is 
decisive that the principle of the covenant with Adam was 
not based upon the mere laws of nature, and the mere natural 
headship of Adam, but on a positive covenant; and that the 
implication of his posterity in his sin was based on the perfect 
imputation determined by the principle of representation, and 
not on the imperfect imputation grounded in the social unity 
and community of interests created by the necessary incidents 
and implications of a procreative race of creatures. 

Let it be distinctly noticed and discriminated that in all 
these cases, both in the civil and religious spheres, in which 
responsibility of one party for the acts of another is asserted, 
it is an implication in the consequences or legal liabilities of 
the act, and not in the moral qualities of the act, that this 
vicarious responsibility takes hold. The securities of a de- 
faulting bank officer are justly held responsible for his lia- 
bilities to the bank ; but they are not held to be participants 
in the moral iniquity of his fraud and theft. The legal con- 
sequences of his act can be justly imputed to his bondsmen, 
but not the moral nature or quality of his act. The agent 
of an insurance company, acting in his official capacity, can 
and does bind them by his official act; but if the agent has 
made false representations in order to secure business, the 
moral iniquity of his falsehood does not attach to the com- 
pany, though they are bound by the legal obligations created 
by the official act of their representative; it attaches solely 
to the agent himself. The immoral quality which has been 
infused into an official act is solely the creature of the unscru- 
pulous agent's own will, without the warrant of his employers ; 
they have authorized him to do business for them, but not 
to lie or cheat for them, and any fraud on his part is exclu- 
sively his own responsibility. His company are bound by his 
official acts, and are justly held to the consequences of those 



Substitution and Kepresentation. 231 

acts, though guiltless of any share in his sins. This plain 
distinction, which is universally recognized in the common- 
sense judgments of mankind, is of immense importance in 
understanding the gospel plan for the justification of the 
ungodly. The moral character and quality of actions are 
incapable of transfer; they remain attached to the person 
who has committed them; but their consequences and legal 
liabilities are capable of transfer; and in this fact lies the 
possibility of salvation to a sinner. To impute sin is simply 
to make accountable for it ; and when we speak of imputing 
sin, we do not mean that the moral stain of sin is transferred, 
but only responsibility for the sin, or liability for its con- 
sequences. When we say that sin was laid upon Christ, we do 
not mean that he was made personally unholy, but simply 
that he became answerable for the consequences or liabilities 
of those sins which he bore in his own body on the tree. When 
his righteousness is said to be imputed to the believer, it does 
not mean that his moral excellence is conveyed, but the legal 
consequences of his obedience. Imputation, whether of sin 
or righteousness — whether the imputation of one's own act 
to himself, or of that same act to another who was represented 
in the act — always has exclusive reference, whether in matters 
human or divine, to the consequences, and not to the moral 
character or quality, of the act imputed. 

This distinction is of boundless importance in the effort 
to comprehend the principle upon which God has been pleased 
to deal with the human race, both in regard to the fall into 
sin, and to the redemption of grace. It cuts up by the roots 
all the objections which have been made to the doctrine of 
salvation for sinners by an imputed righteousness. Let us 
look, first, at the real nature of that theory, and then at those 
objections. One of the great parties to these objections seem 
to have no objection to the imputation of the merits of saints 



232 Substitution and Representation. 

and martyrs to a sinner, nor even to the imputation of the 
merits of Christ, when they are properly mixed with the 
merits of inferior beings; but they raise a most emphatic 
protest when his merits alone are construed as sufficient to 
justify. 

Having seen that there is a principle by which it is possible 
that the acts of one can be justly, and in strict process of law, 
accounted to another, we can now see the plan by which God 
has so wondrously contrived the possible justification of a 
breaker of law. Bear in mind that justification is a status of 
law based upon the fulfilment of its requirements. When the 
actor has done his work, the law passes its sentence upon the 
facts of the case, and judicially declares the law, or covenant, 
to be fulfilled. The successful actor is then placed in a state 
of justification. The claim of the law upon a transgressor 
of its prescriptions is twofold, penal and preceptive; both 
must be met in order to justification. The sinner himself 
can do neither; and the God of all grace furnishes a sub- 
stitute. The appointment of a substitute illustrates the 
infinite grace involved in the contrivance. But to make this 
substitution available in a strict administration of law, the 
substitute is invested with the legal character of a representa- 
tive, thus forming a strictly legal relation between the sinner 
and the substitute. Consequently, when the substitute begins 
to act, he acts in the whole of his official work, not for him- 
self, but for those whom he represents. The legal effects and 
consequences of his acts, though morally his own, are those 
of his constituents; and a court of justice will so decree. 
It is just so in a human transaction. A contractor fails in 
carrying out his contract ; but a friend comes and takes up 
the contract and carries it out. If the friend takes up the 
contract for his own personal behoof, the original contractor 
has no claim upon the result ; but if the friend takes up the 



Substitution and Representation. 233 

contract in the place and as the recognized representative of 
the failing contractor, then his interest in the contract is still 
effective, and a court of justice will maintain his right to the 
rewards of the fulfilled contract. His representative has acted 
for him, and he is entitled to the results of his agent's action 
ir. his behalf. Thus the divine Substitute for sinners becomes 
their legal representative; he takes their place under the 
law ; he assumes their responsibilities ; he takes their place 
under the penalties they have provoked; he undertakes the 
fulfilment of the precept for their benefit. He succeeds in 
fulfillino; all these claims of the law, not for himself, but for 
those whom he represents. The justification which he has 
made possible under a strictly legal process is justification 
for them; it is a real justification for sinners, for the right- 
eousness on which it proceeds was wrought out by their repre- 
sentative agent. His acts are justly imputed to them, on the 
same clearly just and equitable principles on which the acts 
of all representative agents are imputed to those for whom 
they act. This is the necessary effect of the legal relation 
between the parties. "Facit per alium, facit per sef } The 
sinner answers the demands of the law by pleading the pay- 
ment of his debt by his representative. The infinite righteous- 
ness of a divine Saviour is founded on the satisfaction of all 
the claims of the law. It delivers from the curse of the law 
by his bearing the curse on his own body on the tree; it 
secures heaven by his fulfilling every jot and tittle of the 
precept. The function of faith is to form the representative 
relation between the sinner and the Saviour. With this 
ground to stand on, the conscience of the sinner has no longer 
anything to fear from the menace of the law, for the law 
ceases to menace. He no longer fears that God will sacrifice 
him to the just penal claims of the law; for the claims of 
the law against him have been satisfied. He no longer dreads 



234 Substitution and Representation. 

the loss of heaven; for a sure title to eternal life has been 
secured by the perfect obedience of his glorious substitute. 
His sole anxiety now touches his own faith; for he knows 
that whosoever believes in Jesus will be saved. It is a scheme 
which logically meets all the conditions of the question, "Can 
a sinner be justified by the righteousness of God which is 
by faith ?" More than this, it experimentally meets the de- 
mands of a guilty and anxious human conscience. 

The objections to this doctrine of imputation are chiefly 
four, and all are based upon radical mistake in the conception 
of the doctrine. The first is that it is radically unjust to hold 
one person accountable for the acts of another. This is true 
in one sense ; but it is only true when the parties are entirely 
independent of each other. The idea which lies in the minds 
of some, that imputation is a purely arbitrary process, mak- 
ing one person accountable for the acts and liabilities of 
another at the mere will of an authoritative power, and 
without any sufficient and just cause for the imputation, is a 
total mistake. There must in all cases be a true ground for 
the imputation. When one's own act is imputed to him — 
that is, when he is held accountable for it, there is no difficulty 
in seeing the reason and justice of the imputation. When the 
act of one is imputed to another, for which he was in no sense 
answerable, the imputation is sure to be altogether unjust. 
But when there is such a connection between the parties as 
to justify the imputation, that act is absolutely just. That 
connection may be defined by the principle of representation 
or the natural interlock of mutual dependencies established 
by the necessities and laws of a procreative race ; but the con- 
nection and relation must exist before the imputation can be 
made. But where that relation does exist, especially when 
defined by the principle of representation, it would be posi- 
tively unjust not to hold the party represented accountable 



Substitution and Kepkesentation. 235 

for the act of tlie agent appointed to act for him. The dis- 
tinction which vindicates the holding of one party responsible 
for the acts of another, is vital and clear to human intelli- 
gence, and is incessantly employed in the ordinary transac- 
tions of human affairs. A legal and just relation between the 
parties is indispensable to such vicarious accountability ; but 
where that relation exists, it makes the imputation or account- 
ability absolutely just. The objection under discussion fails 
to recognize this radical distinction in accounting the acts 
of one party to another, and, as a matter of course, falls to 
the ground. 

The second objection is that the doctrine of imputed right- 
eousness involves a merely constructive satisfaction to the 
law, under a legal fiction, by which one is construed as the 
representative of the other party. But the relation between 
an insurance agent and his company is not a fiction of law, 
but a reality of law. It is a legal relation, but a real one. If 
the law should attempt to construe an individual as the agent 
of a company, when he was not so in fact, this would be a 
fiction of law, and would soon be shown to be without power 
to bind the company. A legal relation is not a thing which 
can be seen with the eyes, or touched with the fingers, any 
more than a binding promise or an honorable sentiment can 
be ; but it is equally real. It is not a fiction, or an arbitrary 
decretal of law. No law has the right to construe arbitrarily 
one man to be the security of another man's debts ; unless 
he was so in fact, previous to the decree of the law, and 
altogether independent of it, the law cannot make him so. 
Such a decretal would be a fiction of law, and would involve, 
not only a violent exercise of power, but would annihilate 
the possibility of any real satisfaction to justice. A mere 
supposed satisfaction, rendered under a fiction of law, would 
be only constructive in the purpose of the judge so to construe 



236 Substitution akd Repkesentation. 

it ; it could not be a real satisfaction in itself. Justification 
under such a fiction and constructive administration of law 
would, of course, be rendered impossible, inasmuch as it 
depends absolutely on the real fulfilment of the actual law. 
But if a real relation of a real legal representation actually 
exists, then the decree of the law, recognizing this legal rela- 
tion as already and truly existing, accounting the acts of an 
agent to the party for whom he acts, is strictly just. The 
satisfaction rendered by the representative is real in itself, 
and not merely constructive in the decree of the court. The 
gospel basis for the justification of a breaker of the law is a 
real legal and representative relation; it is in no sense a 
fiction of law, and the most sensitive or timid conscience can 
rest upon the satisfaction made for sin by the great High 
Priest of our profession, as being so real and complete as 
to extinguish his perilous responsibility; it takes sin away, 
and presents a ground of hope full of immortality. 

The third objection is that the doctrine of imputed or 
vicarious righteousness involves the impossible absurdity of 
making the moral acts of one person, the bona- fide moral acts 
of another person. This, of course, is absurd and impossible. 
But it has been repeatedly explained that the doctrine of 
imputation has sole reference to the consequences and legal 
effects, and not to the moral qualities of actions. We have 
repeatedly seen that sin involved two distinct elements of 
guilt — the moral desert of punishment and the actual expo- 
sure to punishment — the one determined by the moral nature, 
the other by the liabilities of sin. The moral character of 
sin, or its intrinsic ill-desert, attaches inflexibly to the person 
of the transgressor, and cannot be transferred. But the lia- 
bility of sin, the exposure to legal consequences can be justly 
transferred when a just ground of responsibility exists. Im- 
putation does not involve an impossible transfer of moral 



Substitution and Representation. 237 

character, either of sin or righteousness, when either are 
imputed; it simply means that one is held accountable for 
the evil or the good imputed, for the consequences which 
legally flow out of them, evil consequences from evil deeds, 
and happy consequences from good deeds. Imputation has 
sole and necessarily limited regard to the legal consequences 
of moral action. It is simply holding firm the connection 
between an act and the results which the law has attached 
to it. It may have reference to either sin or righteousness — 
that is, one may be held accountable for evil or for good 
deeds. To impute sin is to hold a man accountable for it ; it 
subjects to penalty. To impute righteousness is to hold a 
man accountable for it ; it entitles him to its benefits. It is- 
not to transfer moral character, but legal responsibilities. 
It has sole reference to the results of an act in law, and not to 
the moral quality of the act itself. The objection that the 
doctrine of imputation involves the impossible absurdity of 
making the moral acts of one person the actual, bona- fide 
acts of another person, is completely set aside by the very 
nature of imputation. The bondsmen of a defaulting bank 
officer are guiltless of all share in the moral criminality of 
his defalcation ; but they are justly held responsible for the 
consequences of it; they are bound to make good the loss 
his crime has occasioned, without sharing in the crime. 

The fourth and last objection is that the actual satisfaction 
of justice makes salvation a matter of justice, and not of 
grace. When the guardian and executor of a ward's estate 
pays out of his own pocket the bond of a helpless debtor of 
the estate, and then makes a present of the bond to the 
relieved debtor, the act does not cease to be an act of grace 
because justice was done to the estate before the act of grace 
was done to the debtor. The gospel proceeds on the very 
same principles; justice is done to the claims of the divine 



238 Substitution and Representation. 

government, in order that grace may be shown to the sinner ; 
and the grace is magnified by the satisfaction of justice. 
Justice and grace are both conspicuously joined together in 
the scripture analysis and description of the great redemp- 
tion. "By grace are ye saved, through faith: and that not 
of yourselves — it is the gift of God." This is one side of 
the testimony. "He is faithful and just to forgive us our 
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness ; that God 
may be just in justifying the ungodly." This is another side 
of the testimony. Justice and grace are united in every step 
of the process, and grace is only the more exalted, the more 
justice is honored. The very circumstance which puts the 
diadem upon the head of grace, which exalts the wondrous 
reach and energy of pure sovereign love, is that in seeking 
to save the sinner, it makes a provision so powerful as to 
completely reverse the situation, and not only rescues him 
from the grasp of justice by satisfying its claims, but by 
that very satisfaction giving him a claim upon justice, and 
guaranteeing his title to eternal life, not only by the truth 
and faithfulness of the divine promise, but by the security 
of the divine justice. God was in no way bound to make a 
covenant of Salvation; it originated in pure uncompelled 
sovereignty of infinite grace. But when he graciously makes 
a covenant, he is bound by it ; and when its terms are com- 
plied with, his truth and faithfulness are bound by his own 
gracious pledges. When those terms require the satisfaction 
of justice, the satisfaction of those claims gives also a bond 
upon his justice. When his covenant is made with the sinner, 
which is done the instant he believes, and by his faith is 
brought into the representative relation with the great Re- 
deemer, God having illustrated his grace in giving him this 
faith, which is the "fruit of the Spirit" and "the gift of God," 
reveals another conspicuous signal of that grace by coming 



Substitution and Kepkesentation. 239 

under covenant bonds to the soul which trusts in him. His 
faithfulness, truth and justice are bound by his own gracious 
pledges when his terms are complied with. Nor is there the 
faintest inconsistency between the justice and the grace. The 
claims upon the justice and faithfulness of God come after 
the work of grace has been done ; grace gives the claim upon 
justice and truth. Grace originates the covenant ; grace mag- 
nifies itself in its splendid provisions to meet every emer- 
gency in the case ; grace executes all the terms which make 
the covenant as effective in force as it was perfect in its con- 
ception; and grace alone leads the sinner into the covenant 
by personal acceptance of its terms. But when the covenant 
is entered, the truth and justice of God then step forward, 
and stand guard over the closed covenant, and guarantee its 
promises to the uttermost. Where is there the least incon- 
sistency between the grace which so works its gracious deliv- 
erances, as to make the justice and faithfulness and truth 
of God the guarantees of its promises ? Nay, this is not all : 
as already intimated, this very circumstance is the most 
powerful demonstration of the exceeding glory of the divine 
grace, that it grants as a free and gracious gift the guarantees 
of faithfulness and justice to the believing sinner. So that 
God becomes, as the scripture declares, "faithful and just in 
the forgiveness of sins," just as he had been before, faithful 
and just in the condemnation of sin. The common-sense, 
intuitions of natural justice in the human understanding 
make a similar decision, and pronounce that the actual pay- 
ment of a man's debt by a friend who comes to his assistance 
is a higher expression of kindness than a mere effort to secure 
better terms from his creditor. The payment of the debt 
secures the protection of justice against the claim of the 
creditor, and this is the very circumstance which exalts the 
kindness of the interposing friend. No objection was ever 



240 Substitution" and Representation. 

more unfounded than this, that the satisfaction of justice 
changes the basis of salvation from the basis of grace to a 
basis of justice. A man is in debt ; a friend comes forward 
and says, "I will give a bonus to your creditor; perhaps it 
may induce him to relinquish his claim, or, at least, deal 
generously with you. But this is uncertain; he may not 
qualify his claim at all; he may refuse to accept the bonus 
altogether." Certainly such an action on the part of the 
friend would be a kindness, although it would not afford much 
relief to the debtor. It would not compare with the kindness 
exhibited if he should say, "I will pay the debt ; your creditor 
cannot refuse legal tender of payment • and the payment will 
extinguish his claim and give you the protection of justice 
and law T against any farther demand." Would the extinction 
of the claims of justice, and the erection of a barrier of jus- 
tice against any farther demand, extinguish all character of 
grace in the action of the friend of the debtor ? Surely every 
sound understanding would determine that the kindness 
which extinguished the debt, and threw the protection of 
justice around the debtor, was a far higher exhibition of 
kindness than that displayed in the mere offer of a bonus — 
a mere inducement to favor, without any force to compel the 
release, or even the modification, of the terms of settlement. 
Just so the grace of God makes its highest manifestation, 
instead of losing its character as grace altogether, by giving 
the believing sinner the benefit of a satisfaction for his sin 
which places his promised title to eternal life under the pro- 
tection of the justice, as well as the truth and covenant faith- 
fulness of Almighty God. The satisfaction for sin by the 
blood of a divine Redeemer is so powerful that it reverses 
the situation completely, and makes the very justice whose 
awful menace filled his soul with dread, the guardian of his 
security. It is the peculiar glory of grace that it "justifies- 



Substitution and Representation. 241 

the ungodly," and summons all the bright and awful shapes 
of the divine holiness, truth, faithfulness, justice, and power, 
and marshals them in one grand body-guard around the be- 
lieving sinner's title to eternal life. 

Let us now briefly consider some of the beneficial effects 
of this grand scheme for the redemption of sinning man. 

First. While it arrests the curse of the law, and rescues its 
guilty subjects, it does so at no loss to the law. So far from 
it, it magnifies the law and makes it honorable. The dignity 
of the law, the sense of its sacred claim to reverence and love, 
is infinitely enhanced, when, before one jot or tittle of its 
claims is suffered to be compromised, the divine Son himself, 
assumed all its obligations upon the guilty objects of his 
infinite compassion, endured and exhausted its penalty, ful- 
filled its precepts, and wrought out a righteousness which 
avails to the justification of every believing sinner. The 
law is not evaded ; it is not compromised ; it is completely 
fulfilled. The breakers of the law are rescued from its 
penalty, but not by violence; they are redeemed from it. 
The moral attributes of God, as the administrator of the 
law, are not only not shorn of a single beam, but exalted 
immeasurably in the view of the universe. All schemes, 
which lower any claim of the law of God, set aside the notion 
of the full contentment of all its demands, all of which are 
intrinsically righteous, or find substitutes for them, dishonor 
the law and dishonor God. 

Second. This plan of justification by means of a representa- 
tive substitute, magnifies the grace as much as it does the 
justice and integrity of God. It is more glorious to the 
energy and tenderness of grace to pay the debt than to com- 
mute it; to give a title to eternal life, than a contingent 
promise of it ; to secure indefectibility in holiness,- than to 

make a mere provision for a possible sanctification, contingent 
16 



242 Substitution and Kepresentation. 

upon right use of grace already given. It is more glorious 
for grace to grant a sure salvation than merely to make salva- 
tion possible to fidelity in service. It is more glorious to the 
friend of the helpless debtor to pay his debt and secure his 
full release, than to make an arrangement by which the debtor 
only secures more time and better terms, but no certain and 
full relief. 

Third. It magnifies the blessedness of a sinner justified 
by grace beyond all words. It places him where Adam would 
have been, had he obeyed and fulfilled the covenant in Eden, 
instead of breaking it ; it places him in a state of justifica- 
tion — he is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. 
It bars the liability to fall ; it secures indef ectibility in holi- 
ness, not complete on the instant, but in a guaranteed ultimate 
possession. The sureness of his title carries with it the 
pledge of fitness to enter upon possession. It secures pro- 
vision for all his necessities during his pilgrimage on the 
earth. It secures heaven. It identifies with Christ; it 
unites to him ; it makes his life the assurance of the believer's 
life ; for the promise is, "Because I live, ye shall live also." 
It makes him an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Jesus 
Christ, in an inheritance incorruptible, and unclefiled, and 
that fadeth not away. 

Fourth. It invites the unjustified sinner to a sure con- 
fidence and hope. It offers him a righteousness which is 
absolutely perfect in its power to justify. It offers it as a 
free gift of the infinite grace of Almighty God — a right- 
eousness which is perfect to accomplish its own ends without 
any mixture with the righteousness of any other being what- 
soever. The good works of the justified person which are 
inflexibly demanded of him, are not demanded of him for 
this particular purpose of securing his justification; they 
are the results and fruits of his justification, which secures 



Substitutions" axd Repkesextatiox. 243 

indefectibility in holiness, but not the causes of it. His good 
service is the golden cluster, but not the root and stock which 
make the cluster. "The gift of God is eternal life;" salva- 
tion through Christ is given; and a perfect title is conveyed 
by the grant. Upon this foundation, on this blood-bought 
righteousness of God, the human breaker of divine law is 
freely justified by grace ; and it is of faith that it might be 
by grace; to the end that the promise might be sure. If 
conditioned ever so remotely upon his own works, the pledge 
could not be sure. But on the gospel ground of confidence, 
the whole superstructure of hope is securely raised. Who 
would not trust it ? It is higher than heaven ; it is deeper 
than hell; it has purchased the one, it has confounded the 
other; nor shall life, or death, or things present, or things 
to come, not even the flaming face of the infinitely Holy One, 
appal even a sinful soul which has obtained a part in the 
righteousness of God without works. 

This is the method of the great gospel redemption. This 
is what is included in the offer of the Lord Jesus to every 
hearer of the proclamation of the divine mercy to the sinners 
of the human race ; it is the justification of life. Grace 
is reigning through righteousness unto eternal life. Can you 
better this way of life, O sinful soul ? Can you rely upon it ? 
Is it worthy of your confidence ? Believe on the Redeemer 
and test it. Faith brings you into the representative relation 
to Christ ; by it you accept him as your security, and he goes 
on your bond to the divine law and justice; your sin is 
accounted to him, and his blood pays the debt ; righteousness 
is accounted to you, and you receive the reward his righteous- 
ness has purchased. Reject this grand righteousness of faith, 
and you must justify yourself by your own ; or, failing that, 
you must abide the condemnation which is the inevitable 
alternative. But only believe on the Redeemer of sinners, 
and the assurance is perfect, "Thou shaft be saved." 



THE FUNCTION OF FAITH IN 
JUSTIFICATION. 

"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through 
our Lord Jesus Christ." — Romans v. 1. 

IT now remains to develop the exact relation and function 
of faith in the matter of justification. We are said to 
be "justified by faith" ; we are taught that there is a "right- 
eousness which is of faith" ; a "righteousness of God which 
is by the faith of Christ" ; a "righteousness of God without 
the law" ; a "righteousness which God imputed without 
works." We are said to be "justified by faith without the 
deeds of the law." In a manifold variety of ways, faith is 
held up to view as sustaining vital relations to the whole mat- 
ter of salvation, and specifically to the justification of the 
ungodly. Faith can have no special function in the justifica- 
tion of a sinless being under a covenant of works; such a 
justification is conditioned solely on personal obedience. 
Faith may possibly have a function in the justification of 
the unfallen angels, who, as some reasonably suppose, were 
kept from falling, and secured in life by an interest in the 
work of Christ. But if this were so, the justification secured 
was not the result of a covenant of works, but of a covenant 
of grace ; and if so, it was mediated by faith, and it is thus 
manifest that there may have been a function of faith in 
the security of sinless beings, as well as of sinful beings. 
However this may be, it is certain that faith sustains an 
absolutely vital relation to the justification of every human 
sinner. This function of faith in justification is unique and 



The Function of Faith in Justification". 245 

special in its relation to the development of this peculiar 
status under the law; it sustains an all-important relation 
to the whole matter of salvation; it gives effect to all the 
ordinances; it is vital to Christian comfort; it is vital to 
growth in grace and usefulness of service ; but it is exclusive 
in its effect on justification. It shares all its subjective influ- 
ences on the person and soul of the saint with other graces 
of the Holy Spirit ; but not in the determination of the out- 
ward and forensic relations of the transgressor to the law 
and justice of God. In these purely legal matters the func- 
tion of faith is represented in the sacred record as peculiar 
and exclusive. We are repeatedly and pointedly said to be 
"justified by faith/' but never to be justified by regeneration, 
or repentance, or hope, or love, or any other grace but faith. 
Why is this \ What is the peculiar office of faith in justifica- 
tion which gives it this unique and exclusive influence in 
securing justification? This emphasis upon faith has led 
the self-righteous heart to the formation of several theories 
about faith, which are important to be understood, lest some 
fatal misapprehension should take place. There ought to be 
no mistake in a matter so vital. 

It has been repeatedly seen that the possibility of justifica- 
tion to a breaker of law, turns upon the discovery of a sub- 
stitute, and the formation of a legal relation between the 
sinner and the substitute by means of the representative prin- 
ciple. They must be one in law before the sentence of the 
law can adjudge the acts of the substitute to the party for 
whom he acts. That relation, as between Christ and the 
sinner, is constituted in the counsels of God by "giving him 
a seed," and in making the covenant of redemption between 
the Father and the Son. But this only provided for the indis- 
pensable relation on one side. It remained incomplete and 
ineffective until accepted and closed up by the accession of the 



246 The Function of Faith in Justification. 

sinner to its terms. This accession is made when the sinner 
believes, accepts Christ as his substitute, appoints him as his 
own chosen representative, and risks his soul on the interven- 
tion of this great redeeming Saviour. This, then, is the 
first grand function of faith ; it constitutes in full effective 
form the legal relation between the sinner and his repre- 
sentative Substitute, upon which the possibility of justifica- 
tion depends. From that relation all the benefits of the great 
redemption flow, justifying righteousness, personal sanctifi- 
cation, adoption into the family of God, the joint heirship 
with Christ, love, hope, joy, peace, and all other fruits of 
the Spirit. To the evolution of all these legal and personal 
blessings, faith sustains a various but indispensable relation. 
But our present concern is exclusively limited to the relation 
of faith to the matter of a sinner's justification. 

There is a second function of faith in mediating justifica- 
tion. That righteousness which is the legal result of fulfilling 
the law must be imputed or accounted to the person receiving 
the benefit of it, and to make the imputation true in the 
view of the law, it must be accepted or received by such 
person, or else the representative relation will not be formed, 
because the person refuses to consent to it, and declines to 
appoint or accept the Substitute as his representative. Faith 
is necessary for this purpose; it is the instrument by which 
the beneficiary concurs in the appointment of the Substitute 
appointed by the Lord of the covenant, and receives the right- 
eousness which secures justification. It is the hand which 
takes all the gifts of the Infinite Benignity as they are freely 
offered. It is simply an instrument of reception. It is in 
no strict or true sense a condition of salvation; but merely 
the instrument, or means, of simply receiving what is offered 
freely and without condition. It is not a condition which 
constitutes the reason why a thing is done. It is not a 



The Function of Faith in Justification. 247 

condition in the sense that it furnishes the effective power 
by which a thing is done. It is not a condition in the sense 
that it constitutes the morally meritorious consideration, on 
account of which a thing is undertaken to be done. Faith 
possesses no special or distinctive moral value in itself 
superior to other graces of the Spirit; it involves logically 
a complete renunciation of self. Faith is placed by Paul on 
a level with hope, and both below charity or love. It is only 
a condition sine qua non, or a condition a quo — one an active, 
the other an unintentional, but both occasioning, not causative, 
conditions — that is, it only affords the occasion for another, 
and the only effective, power to act ; but does nothing directly 
efficient itself. Consequently it is not, and cannot be, a con- 
dition effective of the end, and therefore prescribed, and 
therefore binding when performed. So far as it is a con- 
dition in any recognized sense of the word, it merely creates 
the occasion for another power to act; but in the sense in 
which it is itself active and efficient in bringing about a 
result, it only receives a free and unconditioned gift, and 
binds on fulfilment, first, as such an instrumental condition, 
and secondly, and chiefly, because it receives, as a part of the 
free and unconditioned gift which it freely accepts, a positive 
promise of eternal life, which binds to the uttermost ; and 
thus becomes the all-sufficient security of all the blessings 
offered by grace and received by faith. Such is the simple 
function of faith in justification; it first consummates the 
necessary legal relation between the sinner and the Substi- 
tute ; and, second, receives the free gift of the righteousness 
which fulfils the law and invariably mediates the justification 
of the ungodly. It is of faith, that it might be of grace, 
to the end that the promise might be sure to all the seed. 
This way of relief to the lost sinners of the human family 
is so rich in grace, so powerful in all its provisions to meet 



248 The Function of Faith in Justification. 

every emergency in the situation, so adapted to human weak- 
ness, that presumptively it would be received with transports 
of delight by all to whom the glad tidings of great joy should 
come. But the human heart is so full of pride and self- 
righteousness, so averse to feel and acknowledge its own 
faults, so reluctant to accept a salvation so completely of 
grace, so anxious to have a part of its own in a deliverance 
which is wholly the gift of God, that it has put forth every 
effort to discredit or qualify in some way the salvation of 
God. Among other efforts, it has struggled sternly to pervert 
the office of faith in justification, and to ascribe to it some- 
thing which will leave room for human merit or human 
efficiency in securing the result, and for the indulgence of 
the pride and self-complacency of the carnal mind. Faith 
has been dangerously misconstrued, not only as to its effects, 
but as to its very essence as a term of salvation. We shall 
only notice those misconceptions which have special reference 
to justification. These are mainly three in number. First, 
faith is so construed by some as to make it actually the matter 
of justification — the justifying righteousness by which the 
claims of the law are satisfied, thus making the faith of the 
sinner take the place and serve the purposes of the righteous- 
ness of the divine representative Substitute himself. Second, 
faith is construed by others to be a comprehensive term, 
including all moral actions and all forms of evangelical obedi- 
ence. Third, faith is construed by others to be a strict con- 
dition precedent of salvation, in such a sense that it becomes 
the determining reason why salvation is granted. 

1. Touching the first of these perversions of the office of 
faith — that is, faith construed to be the matter and substance 
of the justifying righteousness — it may be remarked, in the 
first place, that the notion proceeds upon an assumption 
which, as a preliminary effect, makes justification impossible. 



The Function" of Faith in Justification. 249 

Justification proceeds only on the full completion of all the 
demands of the law ; but faith is not all that the law demands. 
The theory, therefore, assumes that the law is relaxed from 
its natural exactness and perfection of claim, by a gracious 
-act of sovereign power, and the law is considered to demand 
nothing but faith; and, by a similar act of power, faith is 
construed as a sufficient righteousness to satisfy the reduced 
or abated law. This, of course, annihilates the possibility 
of a real justification. The law is not fulfilled, but abated, 
which is absurd, since the law is the determination of essen- 
tial moral right, and is incapable of change. Yet more, the 
righteousness ascribed to faith is only constructively, not 
really sufficient. We can only rapidly group the objections 
to this misconstruction of faith. First, to make faith the sub- 
stance of the righteousness which justifies, is logically to 
supersede the righteousness of Christ; it is left vacant of a 
function, and thus discredited as useless. Second, it ascribes 
a virtue to faith which it does not possess ; it construes it 
as equivalent to obedience to the whole law. Third, faith, 
on the most extravagant construction of its moral excellence, 
is not all that the law requires, and, therefore, it is in itself 
incompetent to justify. Fourth, it avowedly makes the merit 
and efficiency of faith constructive in the purpose of God so 
to construe it — not real in itself. It assumes a power in 
God to dispense with justice and law which logically implies 
his ability to save sinners by mere power altogether, and thus 
discredits the necessity of redemption. It thus constructs 
a foundation for human hope which will not sustain it under 
the pressure of clear intuitions of sin, even in this life, and 
at the near approach of death and the realities of eternity. 
ISTothing will answer, then, but the support of a real and 
sufficient atonement ; nothing but the power of an actual 
redemption. Xo human heart can appeal to the merit or the 



250 The Function of Faith in Justification. 

efficacy, to the intrinsic excellence and the supporting power 
of its own faith, when the intuitions of personal sin grow 
keen, or the rushing movement of the eternal realities begin 
to beat distinctly upon the ear. Then the soul wants some- 
thing out of self altogether to lean upon. One of the life- 
time troubles of the true believer is the weakness and vacilla- 
tion of his faith, even when he is clearly instructed, and 
know r s that his safety is conditioned, not directly on his faith 
itself, but on the objects — the blood and righteousness of a 
divine Saviour — which faith illustrates and realizes to his 
view. He knows that the foundation of all true Christian 
hope is not in his infirm faith, but in what faith trusts in ; 
and that the more completely he can lose sight of his faith 
in the things which faith presents to view, the stronger his 
ground of confidence and hope appears. The sole argument 
in favor of the notion of faith as the substance and component 
matter of the justifying righteousness is based upon a mis- 
taken construction of the assertion, "Abraham believed God, 
and his faith was counted for righteousness." This form of 
expression is nothing but an instance of the common figure, 
or transposition, of speech, by which cause is often put for 
effect, and effect for cause. Faith is the invariable instru- 
mental cause which brings the redemption work and right- 
eousness of the Son of God into effective application to the 
condition of the believing sinner ; and consequently that 
righteousness is often called "the righteousness of faith," not 
because faith creates or composes that righteousness, but be- 
cause it conveys it. Money is often called food and clothes, 
not because money can be eaten or worn, but because it can 
procure them. Steam commerce is so called, not because 
steam is the matter or substance of the commerce, but because 
it is the power which transports it. The expression, "right- 
eousness of faith," is the equivalent of the expression, "faith 



The Function of Faith in Justification. 251 

counted for righteousness;" and if the first is expressive of 
conveying, but not of creating righteousness, the other cannot 
fairly he construed to make faith the matter and substance 
of the righteousness which it only conveys and applies. Faith 
is counted for righteousness, because it always carries right- 
eousness ; cause is put for effect ; but the righteousness which 
justifies is wholly distinct from the principle which conveys 
and makes it available. The justifying righteousness is 
called the righteousness of God, as well as the righteousness 
of faith ; righteousness of God is a thing achieved by God, 
a righteousness of faith is something achieved by man; for 
faith, though it is a fruit of the Spirit, is also an act of man, 
and as such is essentially distinct from a righteousness 
achieved by God alone. The distinction between the right- 
eousness of God and a righteousness of faith — that is, a 
righteousness embodied and developed by an energy in man — 
is compulsory, and cannot be confounded. The real right- 
eousness of faith — that is, the righteousness conveyed by 
faith — is identical with the righteousness of God. But the 
righteousness supposed to be createcl by faith itself is radi- 
cally different from the righteousness of God; and if the 
righteousness of God is the real matter and substance of the 
righteousness which justifies, the conclusion is resistless that 
the faith of the believing sinner is not and cannot be. 

2. The second perversion of the function of faith is that 
the term "faith" is a comprehensive term, which includes all 
kinds of moral obedience and all kinds of evangelical service. 
If this be so, justification is the result of works, in spite of 
all Paul's positive asseverations to the contrary; and to talk 
of justification by faith without the works of the law is not 
only false, but deceitful. Such a construction of faith in- 
volves the positive rejection of Paul's doctrine, without an 
attempt to disguise it. 



252 The Function of Faith in Justification. 

3. But the most important misconception of faith is that 
of one of the great schools of evangelical Christian theology. 
This theory disclaims all idea of an intrinsic merit in faith 
as conditioning its effects in mediating salvation under the 
gospel system. It equally disclaims all intrinsic efficacy, or 
power in faith itself, in producing its results. But it con- 
strues faith to be a condition precedent of salvation in such 
a sense that it enters into the reason why the salvation is 
given, and constitutes the determining element of that reason. 
It thus makes salvation, to a certain material extent, a matter 
of debt, though not of merit. God is construed as foreseeing 
that the sinner will make a right use of all the advantages 
and gifts of grace to him; he exercises faith; and on the 
foresight of that faith, as the reason and determining cause 
of the grant, salvation is granted. Now, faith is not a con- 
dition of salvation in any such sense. There are various 
kinds of conditions. There is one condition which furnishes 
the effective power by which a thing is done; another fur- 
nishes the consideration meritorious why a thing is under- 
taken ; another the reason, or design, of the thing undertaken ; 
another simply opens the way for another and an efficient 
power to act, but takes no part in the production of a thing. 
Faith neither furnishes per se the power, nor the merit, nor 
the reason or object of the salvation of grace; it simply 
furnishes the open space for the effective power of grace to 
do its work. It furnishes the occasion, but not the cause, 
of salvation. A man takes a walk into the country; he is 
attacked and murdered. If he had not taken the walk, he 
would not have been harmed ; but the walk was not the cause 
why he was injured. The walk was merely the occasion ; the 
malice of an enemy was the cause of his calamity. The walk 
merely opened the way for the real cause to act. Just so, 
faith furnishes the occasion for grace to save; without an 






The Function of Faith in Justification. 253 

occasion or opportunity to act, the cause cannot act ; but the 
occasion is not the cause, and is not to be confounded with 
the efficient power engaged in the transaction. Faith, then, 
is not a condition at all ; it does not supply the merit, or the 
power, or the reason, but simply opens the way for the real 
power that saves. It is simply the instrument by whick 
salvation is received when freely and unconditionally offered. 
It is the hand of the beggar outstretched to receive an alms 
freely and unconditionally offered him. The distinction 
between these two conceptions of faith is important, though 
not vital. Let us carefully study the differences in them. A 
condition proper constitutes the term or consideration on 
which a given issue turns. It may control by power, or 
merit, or rational consideration. It may influence and 
strongly qualify by regulating occasion, designedly or unde- 
signedly. Let us look carefully into the distinctions between 
these two conceptions of faith. Both constructions may be 
called a condition ; but they are so widely different in mediat- 
ing the result that they are totally different in their sig- 
nificance. One is technically called a condition propter 
quod — "on account of which ;" the other is technically called 
a condition sine qua non — "without which, nothing." The 
one furnishes the rational consideration, the reason why a 
thing is done ; the other furnishes the occasion, but not the 
cause, of its being done — merely opens the way and creates 
the opportunity for another and an efficient power to act. 
When a condition supplies the reason and the determining 
consideration on which the thing is done, it constitutes a strict 
condition precedent. A mere occasioning condition, a con- 
dition which merely opens the way for an efficient cause to 
act is a mere instrumental condition — a mere instrument by 
which another power acts. It is simply necessary in order 
that a thing may be done, but takes no part in doing it. It 



254 The Function of Faith in Justification. 

is not the reason why the thing is done, but merely affords 
an opportunity for it to he done. It is obvious that the 
two species of condition are very different in themselves, and 
in their effects on the resulting product; and is equally 
obvious that the conception of saving faith will be very dif- 
ferent, according as it is construed to be a condition in the 
one sense or the other. A condition in the strict sense of the 
term, whether as affording the reason, or the meritorious 
consideration, or the effective power by or on account of which 
a thing is done, is a something prescribed to secure a certain 
result. It must be complied with; compliance with it pre- 
cedes any effect from it, or any obligation to grow out of it; 
and if the condition is complied with, the obligation becomes 
due in advance of the promised grant, and the grant becomes 
a matter of debt. The compliance with the condition is the 
reason why the grant becomes due or a matter of debt. This 
was the principle which underlay and distinguished the cove- 
nant of works ; and wherever it is found it discriminates 
and carries the spirit of that covenant. It is in its essence 
legalism; and when it so construes faith, it is making the 
terms of evangelical service the terms of a legal obedience. 
But a mere instrument of receiving a free and unconditioned 
gift is widely different. When pure and sovereign grace 
bestows the gift of eternal life on the believing sinner, the 
obligation, to make good the promise and the conveyed title 
to that inestimable blessing, logically succeeds the grant, and 
consequently does not in any degree form any part of the 
reason why the gift is given. On the construction of faith 
as a strict condition precedent, the promise and the obligation 
it creates precede the gift, and constitutes the determining 
consideration why the grant is made. A free and uncon- 
ditioned gift may carry a sure title guaranteed by the faith- 
fulness of the promiser, and this assurance will be as strong 






The Function of Faith in Justification. 255 

and reliable as that created by compliance with a strict con- 
dition precedent. Both will create a bond upon the promiser ; 
but that bond will be of a very different character. The 
obligation created by compliance with a strict condition pre- 
cedent is a matter of debt, which ensues prior to the grant, 
and binds that the grant shall be made. The grant made 
on this ground is the payment of this debt. On the other 
hand, the obligation carried by a free gift does not precede 
the gift, and is not a compliance with an obligation created 
previous to the grant; it is an obligation carried by the 
gift ; it is a part of the gift, and forms no part of the reason 
why the gift was given. The obligation developed by the 
use of a mere occasioning and instrumental condition is not 
in any degree a matter of debt; it is altogether a matter 
of grace. A man may freely assume the obligation of 
another man's debts. This would be an act of pure, un- 
qualified grace alone. But if he engages to assume these 
debts, on condition that the debtor render him certain ser- 
vices, his offer to assume the debts is no longer a free, but a 
conditioned offer; and if the debtor complies with the con- 
dition and renders the service specified, the honorable com- 
pliance with the engagement to assume the debts is no longer 
a pure matter of grace, but a matter of debt. It is now so 
much a matter of debt that if the promiser should refuse to 
assume the debts, a civil court would enforce it. Salvation 
given to faith, construed as a strict condition precedent is 
a matter of debt, and a payment now due ; it is in its logical 
nature legalism, although earnestly repudiated as such. But 
grace, simply given as a free and unconditional gift, and 
accepted as such, may also convey a claim on the fidelity of 
the promiser; but in this case the obligation is grounded in 
grace, and not in debt. The obligation of the covenant, under 
which God freely comes to the believing sinner, is the result 



256 The Function of Faith is Justification. 

of grace, not the reason why it is given ; it succeeds the gift,, 
or is carried with it. Consequently it does not precede the 
grant, as it would have done if it had been the result of 
compliance with a prescribed condition ; nor does it consti- 
tute any part of the reason why the gift was given. Take a 
familiar illustration. It is easy to conceive a person, in a 
whimsical mood, saying to a beggar who asks for alms, "I 
will give it to you, provided you will sing me a song." This 
would be a condition in the strict sense of the term; and 
this is the Arminian idea of faith in its relation to the 
covenant. Mark the distinguishing features of the act. The 
offer is free in one sense, and not free in another. It is free 
in the sense that the maker of it might not have made it at 
all unless he chose to clo it ; but when he makes it, he makes 
it with a condition annexed. In this sense the offer is not 
free, but conditioned. The beggar is not entitled to the alms 
until he complies with the condition. But when he complies 
with it, he is entitled to receive it in advance of his actually 
receiving it. His title to it ensues immediately upon his 
compliance with the condition. The maker of the promise 
is now in debt to the beggar and to his own honor ; and when 
he honorably meets the obligation and gives the alms, the- 
gift is no longer the gift of pure grace, but the honorable 
compliance with an obligation previously developed. The- 
beggar is entitled to pride himself on the wisdom and prompti- 
tude with which he complied with the condition — a condition 
freely established by the whimsical kindness of his benefactor,, 
but which, nevertheless, enabled his sagacity to secure a title 
to the benefit in advance of receiving it. His compliance- 
constituted the chief part of the reason why he got it; for 
if he had refused to comply, he would not have gotten it at 
all. But now let us suppose that no condition was made, no 
sons: called for, and the person applied to, simply extends the* 



The Function of Faith in Justification. 257 

alms asked, for the beggar to take it. This is a very different 
offer from the other. It is a free and unconditioned offer. 
It presents no opportunity for the beggar to create a claim 
to the benefit in advance of receiving it. His prompt and 
prudent compliance has no chance to enter into the reason 
why the gift is given, for the offer is made freely and without 
condition. All that the beggar has to do is to simply take 
what is simply offered him as a free and unconditioned gift 
of pure and sovereign kindness. He must take it in order 
to come into possession of it ; but the extension of his hand 
is merely the instrument by which he receives it — the occasion 
which enables kindness to effectually do its work. This is 
the Calvinistic notion of faith; it is a mere occasion, not a 
cause, of the grant of grace; it is a mere instrument of 
reception, not an efficient condition of salvation. As a mere 
instrument of reception, the beggar's taking the alms was 
not the condition of the gift, for the gift was offered before 
he could take it. It was not the reason, nor any part of the 
reason, why the gift was offered, for the offer was made before 
his purpose to accept or reject it was signified; he might 
have refused it. The sole reason of the gift's being given 
was the kindness of the giver ; and the reception of the gift 
was not the condition precedent of its being given, but was- 
simply necessary to coming into possession of it. Just so,. 
sovereign grace alone is the reason why salvation is given to- 
any sinner ; faith is necessary simply to receive it ;. and when 
received, the gift carries a title to eternal life as a part of the 
gift, which is as sure as any title won by compliance with any 
prescribed condition precedent possibly could be. Faith, con- 
strued as such a condition, makes salvation to a material 
degree a matter of debt ; and Paul testifies emphatically that 
if it is of debt, it is not of grace, and that if it is of grace, 
it is not of debt. 
IT 



258 The Function of Faith in Justification. 

In farther exposition of faith as the instrument of salva- 
tion, it is to be said, negatively, that it is not an instrument 
because it has any peculiar merit in itself, determined by its 
conformity with moral law ; nor any obligatory force, created 
by compliance with prescribed condition, developing debt; 
nor because faith has any intrinsic power in itself, making 
it an efficacious cause of salvation. Faith is made the instru- 
ment of salvation, because of its own nature, which makes it 
capable of receiving things, and a natural adjustment to 
anything to be received. If faith possessed an intrinsic 
merit, salvation would be of merit, and not of grace. If faith 
possesses merit in itself, salvation, as mediated by it, would 
be of merit, and not of grace. If faith created debt, then 
salvation would be of debt, and not of grace. Grace, accord- 
ing to Paul, stands opposed to both merit and debt. The 
difference between merit and debt lies in the distinction be- 
tween moral and prescribed law. Merit is the positive desert 
of reward, springing from compliance with moral law; it is 
supposed to involve a claim upon justice, not merely for ap- 
proval, but reward, arising from compliance with moral law 
on its natural basis as law. Debt arises from compliance 
with prescribed law — with law as a covenant, or with any 
prescribed condition. The papal idea of merit is founded 
upon the confusion of the merit of reward with the simple 
merit of approval; it construes any and every moral act as 
per se carrying a claim to reward, as a matter of justice, and 
attributes special merit to all acts of supererogatory obedience 
and suffering, which it supposes to be possible. Merit de- 
velops a claim solely on the justice of God; debt creates a 
claim on his faithfulness and truth, as well as on his justice. 
It is evident, from what has been said, that the merit of 
reward by any creature, sinless or sinful, is an impossibility, 
simply because the law prescribes all that he can do, and when 



The Function of Faith in Justification. 259 

he has done it, he has only done that which was justly required 
of him ; and he can only say, "I am an unprofitable servant ; 
I have done that which was my duty to do." A man who 
pays his just debts is worthy of esteem and approval, but not 
of a reward for doing it; he has only honorably fulfilled 
a previous obligation. Grace, as already stated, stands 
opposed to both ; it gives freely, without money and without 
price ; but it gives nothing as a matter of justice to merit, or 
of faithfulness to debt as the ground of its gifts. Merit is 
out of the question, practically, and the chief conflict of grace 
is with debt. Paul says, "What is of debt is not of grace; 
and what is of grace is not of debt." Since debt arises from 
compliance with prescribed conditions, if faith is really and 
truly, in the strict sense of the terms, a prescribed condition 
precedent of salvation, then salvation by faith is a matter 
of debt, and not of grace. But we are told that it is of faith, 
that it might be of grace; it is therefore of faith, that it 
might not be of debt ; and any construction of faith which 
makes salvation of debt must be a mistaken construction. 
Faith, construed as a mere instrument of reception, is exactly 
suited to the grace which is to be received: "therefore it is 
of faith, that it might be of grace ; to the end that the 
promise might be sure to all the seed." Compliance with any 
real and true prescribed condition, whether with or without 
grace to enable the performance of it, is the essential and 
differentiating feature of a covenant of works. However sin- 
cerely repudiated, it is in its own nature legalism ; and this 
undesigned or unconscious change of the evangelical terms 
of divine mercy is effected by the perversion of faith from 
a simple instrument of acceptance into a real condition pre- 
cedent. To make this change is to make the covenant of 
grace, in a most material degree, into a covenant of personal 
obedience, and salvation under it, a matter of debt, and not 



260 The Function of Faith in Justification. 

of grace. The true relation of faitli to justification is that 
of a simple instrument or method receiving the free gift of 
the righteousness of Christ, which alone grounds justification. 
Faith is not the meritorious or the procuring cause of salva- 
tion. Faith is not an efficient condition of it, nor in any 
sense the reason why it is given. The beggar's outstretched 
hand is not the condition of the alms given, nor the reason 
why it was given ; it is simply the means by which he comes 
into possession of what is given him freely and without con- 
dition. Faith is just the instrument of justification, and 
nothing more. 

But why is faith necessary as an instrument ? It is neces- 
sary equally, but in a different sense and for a different pur- 
pose, with repentance, regeneration, love, joy, and good works. 
We are never said to be justified by repentance ; we are said 
to be justified by faith, although repentance and faith are 
inseparably conjoined together, like the inside and the outside 
of a cup, or the inside and outside surfaces of a door, the 
one of which always moves as the other moves. When the 
soul turns towards Christ, it turns from sin, and vice versa. 
Yet, although thus inseparably correlated with each other, 
the effect of justification is exclusively mediated by faith, and 
not by repentance. Repentance is indispensable to the salva- 
tion of a sinner; it is necessary in the same sense and for 
the same general reason as regeneration, good works, and all 
the other personal graces of the renewed nature ; but it has 
no function in the matter of justification. Faith is necessary 
in the adjustment of the legal relations of the saved sinner, 
called justification, in a peculiar sense and for a peculiar 
reason. The peculiar sense in which faith is necessary to 
justification is that, inasmuch as we must receive the right- 
eousness of Christ in order to enjoy its legal benefits, we must 
have an instrument, or means of receiving it; and faith is 



The Function or Faith in Justification. 261 

that instrument. The peculiar reason why faith is necessary, 
and no other grace is available, is found in its own nature 
as adjusted to the work of receiving things. It is not because 
of its superior moral value to other graces of the Spirit, for 
Paul makes it equal in this respect to hope, but inferior to 
charity. It is exclusively related to justification, because it 
is a natural gesture of acceptance. The hand is the bodily 
organ for receiving things; it is naturally adapted for that 
purpose. It would be absurd to require one to receive an 
offered gift on the back of the head, because it has no natural 
adaptation for the purpose. Faith, and not love, joy or hope, 
is the instrument of justification, because of its adaptation 
as a natural gesture of acceptance, to receive the free gift 
of the righteousness of Christ, which carries justification and 
all the other elements of salvation with it. The peculiar 
sense in which faith is necessary to justification may be illus- 
trated by a contract for a building, and also the different 
necessity for all the other graces of the renewed nature. The 
money to be paid for the work is necessary in one peculiar 
sense ; it is the reason why the contractor undertakes the job. 
This money represents the fundamental necessity for the 
righteousness of Christ ; his blood and righteousness is the 
price paid for redemption; without that, God would not 
have undertaken to save. But to execute the work, various 
materials, tools, and workmen must be employed. This neces- 
sity represents the necessity of repentance, regeneration, hope, 
love, and all other graces of the Holy Spirit. But yet again, 
it is necessary to the fulfilment of the contract, that the money 
pass from the owner to the contractor ; and this develops the 
necessity for some means or instrument by which the money 
may be conveyed. If there were no possible way in which 
this conveyance could be accomplished, it would defeat the 
whole enterprise ; for if the contractor could not get his 



262 The Function of Faith in Justification. 

money he would not undertake the work. This necessity for 
a means of transferring the money represents the necessity 
of faith to justification ; it is the check, or draft, or extended 
hand, by which the righteousness which justifies is received. 
The method of conveying the money is not the indispensable 
condition of the work's being undertaken, for more than one 
method may be employed. The money is the sole condition 
of the undertaking, and the method of conveying it is not 
material. There must be some method or instrument for 
conveying it; but this method is a variable incident of the 
payment, and no one method is an essential part of it. The 
illustration reveals the necessity of faith, and shows that 
necessary as it is, it is no part of the price paid for re- 
demption. 

This distinction between faith as an instrument, and faith 
as a strict condition precedent of the gospel salvation, though 
not so vital as to affect the safety of true believers who con- 
strue it wrongly, is yet a matter of importance. It enters 
deep into the experience of divine grace, both in the seeker 
after salvation and in the actual believer. If faith is a real 
and strict condition precedent, then it must be complied with 
before any hope can be indulged ; and this hope is dependent 
altogether on the degree of certainty that the conditions have 
been performed ; hope will vacillate with the clearness of the 
evidence on that point. All legalism is troubled with the 
same uncertainty whether the work required has been satis- 
factorily accomplished ; and if the period of testing the com- 
pliance with the condition is the whole lifetime of the man, 
then it is inevitable that more or less uncertainty must overlie 
the whole period of trial, and a sure and lively hope cannot 
be indulged without a degree of presumption. Weak faith, 
on any construction, will yield the same result in experience ; 
but it is materially different where weakness of faith is the 



The Function of Faith in Justification. 263 

cause, and where the nature of the construction put upon 
faith is answerable for the result. Uncertainty of hope 
grounded upon uncertainty of personal compliance with a 
prescribed condition, is different from an uncertainty 
grounded upon weakness of faith in a sure ground of con- 
fidence. The righteousness of Christ is a sure ground of 
reliance ; but a weak confidence in it will yield small comfort. 
But where the ground of confidence rests upon the uncertain 
personal equation whether a prescribed condition has been 
sufficiently complied with, the space for anxiety and doubt is 
quite seriously enlarged. A comfortable Christian hope is 
more difficult on this theory of a strict condition precedent. 
But grace, offered as a free and unconditioned gift, leaves no 
room for a doubt whether the condition has been complied 
with ; for no condition has been prescribed. Such an offered 
gift, simply received as a gift, irrespective of conditions, will 
lay a less perplexing basis of hope. Yet a gift, free and 
unconditioned, may carry with it, as a part of the gift, a 
sure title, based upon the faithfulness of the promiser — a 
title as reliable as any title based upon compliance with pre- 
scribed condition can be made. Both will bind the promiser ; 
but the debt or obligation to give the grace sought precede 
the grant, in the case of compliance with prescribed condition, 
and binds that the grant be given ; but in the case of a free 
gift, simply received as such, the debt or obligation to grant 
the grace sought, follows instead of preceding the gift, and 
is a part of the gift. But this freely-given bond upon the 
faithfulness of the gracious giver will yield a surer founda- 
tion for hope than an uncertain compliance with a prescribed 
condition can do ; the ground of hope is better in itself, and 
more easily discovered ; and the believer may rejoice in the 
Lord always, and through the whole course of his life. The 
ground of hope, at least, gives this better warrant. The dis- 



264 The Function of Faith in Justification. 

tinction is clear, and reaches both deep and wide, between 
salvation as the result of compliance with faith as a prescribed 
condition precedent, which is legalism; and salvation as a 
free and unconditioned gift, through faith as a simple act of 
acceptance ; this is the gospel of God. 

It equally qualifies the offer of salvation and the obligation 
to instant acceptance. Now is the accepted time. The offer 
of an earthly estate, or a free pardon for a crime, may be 
instantly accepted, and ought to be. Such is the offer of the 
divine grace; it demands instant acceptance. But if there 
is a condition first to be performed, compliance must first be 
made with it. This interposes a period of time before the 
offer can be accepted. The beggar must sing his song, and 
an interval of time, more or less extended, must intervene. 
How long that interval may be, there is no deciding; but it 
logically defers the acceptance of the offer for a greater or 
less period. Not only is the condition to be performed, but 
certified as competently done; and both defer logically the 
closure with the offer. But a simple acceptance is logically, 
as well as practically, consistent with instant action. The 
more the sinner is reduced to nothingness, and the more 
Christ and the Father's grace is exalted in the matter of 
salvation, the better it will be for both saint and sinner. 



MIRACLE. 

FIRST SERMON. 

"God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and 
with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own 
will." — Hebrews ii. 4. 

THE present age is assuredly one of the most remarkable 
in the history of mankind; and in no respect more 
remarkable than in its religious developments. On the one 
hand, never since the age of the apostles, has there been so 
much ardor and steady enthusiasm in the propagation of the 
Christian faith. Millions of money are yearly contributed 
without compulsion to the revenue of the kingdom of Christ. 
The press groans under the incessant issue of millions of 
Bibles, books, papers, defences, explanations, recommenda- 
tions, and incitements to the propagation of Christianity. 
The pulpit all over Christendom is filled by multitudes of 
able and zealous teachers. Multitudes of the highest and 
most cultured minds outside of the pulpit are devoted friends 
of the gospel. Once a year, for one whole week, the Christian 
body on the whole earth gathers for united prayer to Almighty 
God, showing no decay in the belief that he is a prayer- 
hearing and a prayer-answering God. On the Christian side, 
the signs of vital faith and energy are irresistibly clear. On 
the other hand, the old war of resistance to Christian claims 
is maintained with a renewed ardor under manifold forms 
of hostility. In the middle of the nineteenth century, in the 
heart of the American Eepublic, two new religions, both as 
radically opposed to Christianity as Islamism or Judaism, 



266 Miracle. 

have been proclaimed, formulated into public organizations, 
and embarked upon a scheme of active and widespread 
propagandism. Mormonism has for years taken formal 
shape, denned its doctrines, organized its forces to extend its 
views, and shocked the moral sense of Christian nations by 
the formal introduction and endorsement of polygamous insti- 
tutions. Spiritualism is rapidly crystallizing into order, both 
of creed and organization. For years scepticism and positive 
infidelity have thrown themselves into the boldest attitudes 
of doubt and positive renunciation of the religion of the 
gospel. Paganism has in one sense been restored in parts of 
Christendom. In some respects the manifestations o± this 
sceptical spirit have greatly improved, in the elements of 
respectability, since the days of Voltaire and Tom Paine. 
The shallow learning of these early leaders of modern 
infidelity, their bitter hate and superficial reasoning, excite 
the contempt of the far more learned and candid doubters 
of the present century. While traces of embittered feeling 
are sometimes discernible, there is also an unquestionable 
manifestation of candor and earnestness. Nay, more; some 
of these sceptics display a deep and pathetic sensibility to 
those evils of human life which condition the demand for some 
form of religion; evils, the existence of which they fully 
recognize, and for which they passionately desire a remedy. 
These words of one of them are full of pathetic earnestness, 
and even of a touching humility: "The writer is conscious 
only that he is passing fast towards the dark gate which 
will soon close behind him. He believes that some kind of 
sincere and firm conviction on these things is of infinite 
moment to him; and entirely diffident of his own power to 
find his way towards such a conviction, he is both ready and 
anxious to disclaim 'all rights of private judgment' in the 
matter." From such a spirit as this the church has no right 



Miracle. 267 

to turn away with a condemnation, however just, of the secret 
moral elements which may possibly lie responsibly at the 
bottom of such painful doubts ; her business is to solve them, 
and to bring, if possible, the cordial and the balm of faith 
to soothe the anxieties they create, ^"ot only is this element 
of sensibility and candor to be found in the sceptical specula- 
tions of the day, but the amount of solid learning, profound 
analysis, and critical skill is real and imposing. There is 
often to be seen evidence of shallowness, hasty inference, 
and indications of too great eagerness to find proof hostile 
to Christianity. But the evidences of culture, scholarship 
and profound investigation are also frequently clear to view, 
and the spirit of scientific candor is likewise frequently be- 
yond all question. The speculations of such minds are con- 
sequently exerting a great amount of influence all over the 
reading world, taking hold upon the more independent, ad- 
venturous and thoughtful minds in almost every community, 
and breeding influences which are only the more dangerous 
from the elements of candor and intelligence which are inter- 
woven in their final results. It is asserted by Froude that 
"the truth of the gospel is now more widely doubted in Europe 
than at any time since the conversion of Constantine." 1 The 
apparent discrepancies between the theories and conclusions 
of science, and some long-accepted interpretations of scrip- 
ture ; the speculations of philosophy ; the doubts raised by the 
critical study of ancient M'SS. ; the attempts to eliminate 
all the elements of the supernatural from the gospels, and 
at the same time to preserve the historical and moral elements, 
which are confessedly impregnable — all these causes com- 
bined with the increase of luxury, the growth of vice, the 
intensification of the opposing spirits of humanity and ma- 
terialism — many causes of totally opposite moral character- 

1 Fronde's Short Studies, p. 226. 



268 Miracle. 

istics, all cooperating to the same result, will explain this 
wide prevalence of the sceptical and of the more positive 
infidel spirit. 

How to encounter this radical opposition is sometimes 
revolved with perplexity and distress by the friends of the 
gospel. Some suppose that total silence in the pulpit is the 
best policy ; otherwise, that many will be informed of existing 
•doubts, concerning which they would have never heard ; and 
in this way the church itself may be made the instrument 
of propagating infidelity. To this view it is sufficient to 
reply that the widespread influence of the daily press, and the 
constant publication as news of the various movements of 
modern thought, bring these religious speculations of the 
day in contact with almost every reader in the course of time. 
The mischief will only be aggravated by the silence of the 
pulpit; that reticence will be construed into inability to 
answer and fear of the issues. It will thus, by its silence, be 
warped into an instrument for intensifying unbelief. The 
only way to prevent such a result from both of these directions 
is for the church to teach the truth according to her commis- 
sion. There is no cause for alarm. Christ declared he came 
to send a sword on the earth; and there is always need for 
such an instrument in a world full of error. The church pays 
a poor compliment to her Head, and to the glorious system 
of truth which has been placed in her charge, when she trem- 
bles at the sounds of war. ~No Christian need fear the result 
of the conflict. The gates of hell shall not prevail. • The 
church of God and the system of gospel grace stand upon 
facts; a past fact is incapable of change by any power in 
the universe, even by the power of God himself. Power is 
the ability to produce change; whatever is incapable of 
change is not an object of power; and it is no impeachment 
of even infinite power that it cannot change what is per se 



MlEACLE. 269 

incapable of change. A fact accomplished is a fact forever ; 
it stands with all its inferences and influences immovably 
attached to it ; and if the power of the infinite God is unable 
to alter it or its consequences, moral and inferential, no other 
power, whether of science or human wit, can possibly do it. 
All the discoveries of science will never be able to obliterate 
the past facts in the history of Jesus of Nazareth, any more 
than the facts in the history of Napoleon. Standing on this 
unalterable foundation of past fact, the gospel and the church 
of God can well afford a candid and calm consideration of all 
that can be imagined or proposed in opposition to their claims 
to confidence. 

In the modern assaults upon Christianity, miracle is 
attacked with a special energy of assault, but with no unity 
in its method. The old ground developed by Hume is 
strongly occupied by one class of sceptical thinkers. It asserts 
that miracle is an impossibility; that the order of nature 
is inviolable — so fixed and unchangeable as not to admit of 
miracle; that universal human experience certifies this 
inviolability; and that no evidence, however imposing, can 
prove what is per se impossible. By this convenient generali- 
zation all questions of fact are summarily set aside. Another 
class simply affirm that miracle is not proved ; and they allege 
that the miracles of St. Ignatius and St. Francis of Assissi 
stand on evidence as clear and strong as the miracles of the 
RTew Testament. Others, again, attempt to combine both 
of these grounds, and object to miracles, first, on the ground 
that they are impossible ; and second, with superfluous energy 
of argument if the first assertion is true, on the plea of defec- 
tive evidence. Still another class admit the facts in question, 
but dispute their miraculous origin in the power of God, 
on the plea of their production by occult natural causes. 
The attempts of Strauss and Renan — the leaders of modern 



270 Miracle. 

infidelity in the sphere of literature, as distinguished in 
science — to protect the general credibility of the gospel nar- 
ratives, while they turn all that is supernatural and divine — 
the one into myths, and the other into poetical legends — are, 
rightly considered, powerful testimonies to the unassailable 
basis of fact on which the gospel rests. The attempt to retain 
the facts, and yet explain them away, is suicidal and absurd ; 
but it certainly discloses the powerful foundation which they 
desire to unsettle. These leaders of modern scepticism are 
far from holding consistent grounds; but they do distinctly 
concede the basis of facts, while they endeavor to explain 
away their nature and account for their origin on purely 
natural principles. 

The Christian faith is ready to meet investigation. It 
requires every man who accepts it as it claims to be, "to be 
ready to give a reason for the faith that is in him." It appeals 
to evidence. It denies no right of inquiry. If it is not true, 
no man is bound to receive it as true, for that would be a 
falsehood, and no man is bound to believe a lie. If it cannot 
be proved to be true by evidence of the highest credibility, no 
one is bound to believe it. To affirm anything to be true, in 
the absence of anything to show it to be true, is to make breach 
upon the law of veracity. Evidence is the ground and 
measure of assent, because it is the only way in which the 
existence of any truth can be known ; and to affirm the exist- 
ence of a thing without any reason to believe or know of its 
existence is falsehood. The absence of evidence disables the 
possibility of belief and exempts from responsibility. The 
presence of competent proof makes a refusal to accept the 
truth a matter of will, of mere reluctance to accept it, the 
result of moral causes controlling the judgment of the evi- 
dence; and, of course, carries responsibility. We propose a 
brief series of discussions upon the evidences of Christianity 



Miracle. 271 

as implicated in the miracles and the prophecies which are 
alleged to support its claims to be a revelation from God. 
To this, Strauss, Kenan, and the Westminster Review chal- 
lenge the church. We will endeavor to meet it. 

In order to meet the case as stated by the different classes 
of sceptics who dispute the miracle of scripture, we shall 
discuss : 

First. The possibility of miracle. 

Second. The capability of proof in miracle. 

Third. The actual proof of scripture miracle, compared 
with the evidence of papal miracle, and the proof of mesmeric 
and spiritualistic phenomena which are alleged to rest on 
equal testimony. 

1. The speculations, both in philosophy and morals, of that 
unquestionably great and profound thinker, David Hume, 
have exerted a more extensive influence upon all modern 
speculation than those of any other man since the days of 
Aristotle. To refute him, the founder of the modern Scottish 
school of natural realism or common-sense — a worthy antago- 
nist of the great sceptic — began his labors. The philosophy 
of Kant, in Germany, was a revolt against the extreme ten- 
dencies of Hume's scepticism, and Kant's philosophy was 
the occasion of the renewed excitement of philosophical specu- 
lation on the continent, resulting in the various schools of 
German and French philosophy. Hume's connection with 
French scepticism was even more direct ; and to this day his 
view of the miraculous evidence and divine claims of Chris- 
tianity is the controlling element in all modern sceptical 
speculation. The ground he takes is that miracle is an im- 
possibility. He does not touch at all the evidence alleged in 
support of the facts asserted. He simply says, no evidence 
can prove a miracle, simply because a miracle cannot happen ; 
it is an impossibility ; the order of nature is fixed and inviola- 



272 Miracle. 

ble. He rests his whole polemic on the fixed and inviolable 
character of the laws of nature, which renders such a dis- 
turbance as miracle impossible. He rests his assertion of 
this alleged fixity in the laws of nature on the asserted uni- 
versal experience of the human race. To this ground taken 
by Hume, many of his successors heartily agree; but some 
of them not consistently. Others concede the possibility, but 
deny that this possibility has ever passed over into a fact. 
Strauss scornfully refuses to discuss seriously any fact alleged 
in violation of what he affirms to be the universal law of the 
natural world. This view is the warp and woof of all specu- 
lation which rejects the supernatural, not only in Chris- 
tianity, but in the whole material universe. 

2. The question now before us is simply whether miracle 
is possible ? The argument against this possibility is that it 
is a violation of the order of nature, which is fixed and inviola- 
ble ; and that we know this order to be inviolable from uni- 
versal human experience. This argument involves two dis- 
tinct points : first, the inviolability of the order of nature ; 
and second, the universality of human experience in yielding 
proof of that fact. The argument in reply is an absolute 
denial of both points in the sceptical contention. 

3. The remark obvious to be made on this plea of the 
sceptic is that it assumes the very question in dispute upon 
both of these points. The assertion of a miraculous fact is- 
an assertion that the order of nature is not inviolable; the 
inviolability of the order is brought into question by the 
assertion of such a fact; and to deal imperiously with the' 
fact by asserting the inflexibility of law, and refusing to 
consider the fact which disproves the alleged character of 
natural law, is not only a breach upon the laws of all just 
reasoning, but a breach of that law of justice and moral 
integrity which extends its jurisdiction over all the activities- 



MlEACLE. 273 

of a moral and rational being. To concede the major premise- 
of Hume is to concede the question in dispute before any- 
proof is admitted and considered. The major premise of 
the sceptic is a bald petitio principii. The second premise 
in the sceptical contention is subject to the same fatal im- 
peachment; it, too, begs the question at issue. To say that 
universal human experience testifies demonstratively to the 
absolute inviolability of the order in nature is to make a 
second assumption of the point to be proved. It is the very 
gist of the Christian contention that miracle was displayed 
in the experience of thousands in the age of Christ. This 
celebrated argument is grossly vitiated by two glaring viola- 
tions of the laws of reasoning; it begs the question in both 
branches of its statement of premise. That the course of 
nature, as a general rule, is fixed and inviolable, is not only 
admitted by the Christian casuist, but it is asserted by him 
to be essential to the authentication of miracle. Miracle 
would have no significance of divine interference, no testi- 
monial force, unless the course of nature was ordinarily 
inviolable by any power subordinate to the Deity. Miracle 
implies not only the exertion of divine power, but the insuffi- 
ciency of any other power to produce the effect which is called 
miraculous. It implies a control over the laws of nature 
entirely beyond all other power but the power of God ; and,, 
therefore, becomes demonstrative proof of divine interposi- 
tion. The inviolability of nature is properly asserted as a 
general rule, and as against all other beings except the infinite 
God. But to assert that this uniformity of nature, and this 
inviolability of natural law, is literally absolute, and as com- 
pletely beyond the power of the Almighty God, as it is beyond 
the power of any other being, is to beg the question, and is 
wholly without warrant. To this argument we reply, first, 

that it is unphilosophical to appeal to natural law against 
18 



274 Miracle. 

fact. Fact is the basis of la*w; the law is inferred from the 
fact; all natural law is inferred from the facts of nature. 
Whenever a fact is discovered, in the teeth of a law previously 
supposed to be a true law, the fact is not cashiered; it is 
either allowed to modify the law, or is held as an isolated 
but admitted truth, whose place in the system is not yet 
settled, and is held for further investigation of its true rela- 
tions. To insist upon a law, no matter how widely and truly 
generalized, from facts, as discrediting a new fact, is to violate 
the fundamental principle of inductive science. The law of 
gravity is a true law of nature. Suppose one should appeal 
to it against the fact of an Indian juggler walking up into 
the air, and seating himself, without any discoverable means 
of support. Would the appeal to the law of gravity be a 
legitimate proof against such a fact % Home, the celebrated 
spiritualist medium, is said to have so far improved upon 
this trick of the Hindoo fakirs as to float round in the air. 
If true, it would be hopeless to discredit the fact by an appeal 
to the law of gravity, a true and recognized law though it be. 
The natural and just law of inquiry is to investigate the 
facts, in advance and independent of any assertion of law; 
and if the allegation of fact is proved to be actually true, 
any appeal to law in order to discredit its existence is alto- 
gether illegitimate. The ascertainment of the fact either 
compels the modification of the law by restricting its extent, 
or possibly overthrowing its authority as law altogether. T$o 
man has a right to assert impossibility against fact; and 
when the Christian casuist appeals to fact and proffers proof, 
Mr. Hume and his followers are bound to investigate the 
facts, and make themselves ridiculous in claiming to be too 
rational even to discuss the issue raised. They are entitled 
to appeal to the uniformity of nature to a certain extent. 
The presumption is against the assertion of miracle; and 



MlKACLE. 275 

the assertor of such an event must take the burden of proof, 
and not only demonstrate his facts, but show a sufficient 
reason for such an extraordinary interposition of the Supreme 
Being. The uniformity of nature is a general truth, and is 
fully entitled to recognition as such ; it is a general, though 
not an universal law. Consequently there is a legitimate 
appeal to it in many cases of alleged fact. Many things are 
alleged to be fact, when there is no fact in the case. We do 
not hesitate to reject as incredible the assertion of a dead 
man's being brought to life by a mesmeric process, or of 
St. Martin's crossing the Mediterranean floating on his cloak, 
simply because the laws of nature are violated by such events 
without any evidence that they occurred at all, or any emer- 
gency in the divine administration sufficient to call for the 
divine interference. False miracles have been repeatedly 
alleged; but they are no more entitled to discredit true 
miracle than false allegations of historical fact are entitled 
to discredit all historical facts. The various distinctions be- 
tween false and true miracle raise an impregnable wall of 
differences between the two classes of events, which will leave 
no room for any confusion of the two, as will be seen here- 
after. It is enough to say, for the present, that we are not 
only allowed, but required to stand upon the uniformity of 
nature until the evidence of an alleged fact in opposition to 
that uniformity is sufficient to establish the fact, and to 
demonstrate the necessity for it. While we have no right 
to appeal to law to discredit a demonstrated fact, we have no 
right to qualify the law on anything less forcible than a fact. 
A striking illustration of the real absurdity underlying 
Hume's celebrated argument against miracles, drawn from 
the impossibility of their occurrence, is furnished by the early 
history of steam navigation on the high seas. Shortly after 
the demonstration of the entire practicability of river and 



276 Miracle. 

along-shore navigation by steam vessels, a numbers of English 
capitalists conceived the notion of attempting it upon the 
ocean. The subject was new; the venture was hazardous to 
capital ; no data were in reach ; and they referred the subject 
to Dyonisius Lardner, the first practical scientist of his day.. 
He was a man of splendid talents, vast acquirements, a real 
encyclopedia of vast and various scientific knowledge. He- 
undertook the calculation, and finally presented a report, full 
of subtle and learned estimates, in which he demonstrated 
the impossibility, in the nature of the case, of crossing the- 
ocean by steam. In the meantime some English ship-builders ■ 
built a steamship and sent her across the Atlantic. They 
could not have answered Lardner's argument ; probably could 
not have understood it; certainly could not have matched 
it by a counter demonstration. But they broke the demon- 
stration to pieces by developing a fact. Had Lardner's argu- 
ment been made after the steamer had completed its voyage,, 
it would have been an exact parallel with Hume's demonstra- 
tion against miracles. He aimed to demonstrate impossibility 
in the teeth of facts already accomplished, refusing, like his 
disciple, Strauss, to consider the evidence at all, on the asser- 
tion of an impossibility which those facts disproved. Our 
right to assert the proof of the facts which broke the alleged 
impossibility to pieces will be vindicated when we come to 
the exposition of the evidences of the gospel miracle. 

To proceed with the vindication of the possibility of mira- 
cle. The next proof of the possibility of miracle is drawn 
from the character of a perfect being, which is the definition 
of God. Infinite excellence in every quality that enters into 
the notion of excellence composes the conception of a God; 
moral excellence in every quality, wisdom and power in 
infinite degree must be attributed to him, or the notion of a 
perfect being is marred. One of the false assumptions in 



Miracle. 277 

Hume's argument is that the inflexible character of natural 
law places it beyond control — all control, even beyond the 
•control of God himself. It affirms the order of nature to be 
fixed and inviolable in the most unlimited sense of the terms. 
That which is absolutely fixed and unalterable is unalterable 
by any power, even infinite and divine. The assertion is, not 
that God will not, but that he cannot, change or modify it. 
If it can be modified by almighty power, the possibility of 
miracle is proved. If he has actually done it, the fact of 
miracle is proved, and the proof of the fact settles the ques- 
tion of possibility. Xow, is it possible for God to modify 
the order of nature, supposing him to desire to do so ? The 
answer to this question will turn on the nature of God as 
a personal or an impersonal being. If he is an impersonal 
being, he is a necessitated being; and is incapable of any 
energy, except what is determined by the unalterable quality 
■of his own constitution. He can do no miracle, because he 
■can do no voluntary or designed thing. To account for the 
myriads of adjustments in nature will then become an insolu- 
ble problem. But if God is a personal being of intelligence, 
will, and boundless power and perfection of every kind, his 
relation to the universe is settled ; he is its creator ; and the 
universe is the product of his will and power. To admit 
such a deity is to allow him creative power and a limitless 
capacity of self-manifestation. To deny to a being of infinite 
perfection the power to certify his own existence — to do 
things which will exhibit, not only his being, but the energy 
and qualities of his nature — is absurd. If he exists, he can 
manifest his existence, else his existence could not be known 
independent of its manifestations. But if God is able to 
-create, his power to control, modify, or change the order of 
nature is proved, for the power to work miracle is nothing 
more or less than the power to create. To deny the power to 



278 Miracle. 

create is simply atheism. There is no logical middle ground 
between the admission of God's power to work miracle and 
the denial of his existence. Hence most modern impugners 
of miracle take refuge in pantheism, and deny the existence 
of God as a personal being. The only God, many of these 
speculators admit, is a blind force, with no more qualities 
of personality than the force of gravity or magnetism — a 
force perpetually developing itself under fixed laws, along a 
line of endless action and reaction. The universe is a develop- 
ment, not a creation. This theory involves the denial of man's 
personality, the data of consciousness, and the most obvious 
facts of the human constitution. Every proof, therefore, of 
human or divine personality, intelligence and will is a proof 
of the possibility of miracle and a refutation of pantheism. 
The possibility of miracle is proved by the unquestionable 
fact that the power to work miracle is nothing but creative 
power. To create ab origine is one of the highest acts of 
power. To admit a creative energy in the first cause, and to 
deny it the capacity to work miracle, is self-contradictory. 
Deism is absurd, but pantheism, which is the only logical 
refuge of the impugner of miracle, is still more absurd. To 
admit a creator of the universe at all, is to admit that the 
actual constitution of the universe is the result of will. What 
are called the laws of nature are nothing but selected energies 
impressed upon the constitution of things by the will and 
power of the Creator ; and they remain subject to his control. 
The laws of nature are assumed, in Hume's argument, to 
possess a character which places them out of his power. This 
makes creative power self-destructive; the exertion of it 
determines a limit upon itself in things capable of change. 
To say that God will not alter the system he has ordained 
may be true; but to say that he cannot alter it, is logically 
to deny, creation as an act of will, and to admit a power to 



Miracle. 279 

produce, and to deny it capacity to control its product. Crea- 
tion, then, becomes an abnegation of sovereignty, and omnipo- 
tent power is exhausted by its own exertion. God dies in 
the act of creation. Whatever is capable of change is an 
object of power, and carries with it the admission of possi- 
bility. A power capable of creation is capable of miracle; 
for creation is miracle, and proves the power in dispute by 
the actual exertion of it. Modern scepticism sees clearly what 
the old deists could not see — that the admission of a super- 
natural and divine agency anywhere in the universe, and at 
any period, really closed the question. It is a matter of sin- 
cere congratulation that the long battle for the supernatural 
in Christianity has developed, at last, the unmistakable fact 
that there is no resistance to miracle, except by the denial 
of divine power in creation ; no resistance to the supernatural 
in Christianity, except by the denial of the supernatural in 
the universe ; no escape for the impugner of miracle, except 
by the denial of the personality and perfection of God, and a 
retreat into the absurdities of pantheism. 

4. The other branch of the error in Hume's argument is 
equally vulnerable ; he appeals for proof of the inviolability 
of natural law to what he asserts to be the universal experi- 
ence of mankind. This claim not only refuses to consider the 
experience of thousands in the days of Christ, but implies the 
modest assumption of a full acquaintance with the experience 
of the whole human race; it also implies the measurement 
of possibility by actual human experience; it implies an 
acquaintance with the possibilities of change in the universe, 
and this implies the knowledge of the possibilities of infinite 
power. All this amounts to the assumption of infinite know- 
ledge on the part of the objector. To deny the possibility 
of miracle is to deny the possibility of change in the operation 
of natural law. To deny the possibility of change in the 



280 Miracle. 

operation of natural law is to assert to human experience the 
knowledge of all possible changes in the operations of law — 
which is absurd. On this obvious absurdity — the measure- 
ment of possibility by human experience — many modern 
sceptics have articulately abandoned Hume's ground, that 
miracle cannot be proved, because it is impossible to happen ; 
and, while admitting the possibility of miracle, only deny 
that it is a possibility which has ever passed over into a fact, 
or else impugn the sufficiency of the evidence which is cited 
to prove it. Froude 1 distinctly impeaches the sanity of any 
man who would raise "his narrow understanding into a 
measure of the possibilities of the universe' 7 ; and charges 
the Protestant controversialist with systematic misrepresenta- 
tion of the issue as one touching the possibility of miracle, and 
not merely a question of proof. His censure is justly laid 
on those who have denied that possibility, but not on those 
who have charged them with that denial. When Hume denies 
miracle, on the ground that the order of nature is inviolable, 
he certainly does deny the possibility of miracle ; it is only 
another form of expressing the idea; the idea is the same. 
When Strauss scornfully refuses even to discuss, as a matter 
of fact or history, any departure from the order of nature, 
the same denial of possibility is implied. When Froude 
denounces as insanity the measurement of possibilities in the 
universe by a human understanding, he confesses the utter 
destruction of Hume and Strauss' ground by the Christian 
casuist; testifies that the charge of impeaching possibilities 
in the universe is true, contrary to his own previous assertion ; 
and is not only self-convicted of self-contradiction, but exposes 
his own want of charity and candor in accusing the friends 
of miracle of misrepresenting the point at issue. Yet this 
ground of Hume's is the strong point of the impugner of 

1 Fronde's Short Studies, p. 186. 



MlEACLE. 281 

miracle. As long as he can stand on the broad issue that 
miracle is impossible, and appeal to the uniformity of nature, 
he sweeps away all troublesome questions of evidence, and 
by one stroke overturns the whole system of super naturalism. 
He compels his Christian antagonist into a cautious and dis- 
criminating method of defence and assault. To yield this 
point, as Froude does under the stress of the Christian argu- 
ment, is to yield the key to the whole sceptical position. 

To recapitulate and present in brief the argument of the 
sceptic and the points of the answer : Hume argues that no 
amount of testimony can prove a miracle, because a miracle 
cannot happen ; it cannot happen because the order of nature, 
or the laws of nature, are inviolable. He asserts that no 
liuman testimony can prove a miracle, first, because the mira- 
cle is impossible; and second, because the human testimony 
is discredited by this absolute uniformity of nature and its 
laws. He asserts that this uniformity of nature is demon- 
strated by universal human experience. 

The answer is an absolute denial of both the premises in 
this sceptical argument; miracle is not impossible, and 
numan experience is not universal against it. The sceptical 
contention is impeached — First. Because the argument begs 
the question, assumes both the points to be proved, and stands 
discredited by the laws of reasoning as a sophism — a petitio 
principii. Second. It violates the law of inductive science 
by appealing to law, to discredit a fact in advance of any 
consideration of its evidence. Third. It assumes a character 
in the laws of nature which places them beyond the control 
of the Almighty God himself — a conception not only not 
proved, but disproved by the nature of creative power. 
Fourth. The possibility of miracle is positively proved by 
the personality and perfection of God. There is no logical 
middle ground between denial of miracle and atheism. Fifth. 



282 Miracle. 

The possibility of miracle is proved by the absurdity of sup- 
posing that an infinite being may be incapable of self-mani- 
festation, and the display of his qualities. He can do things 
which are peculiar to himself, and which consequently reveal 
his qualities. Sixth. It is proved by the fact that there is 
no limitation upon infinite power in reference to things 
capable of change. To deny this is to be guilty of the self- 
contradiction of fixing a limit upon unlimited power. The 
system of nature as the product of will is capable of change. 
If it was the result of an inherent necessity, it would be 
incapable of change. Seventh. Miracle is simply an instance 
of creative power, and is necessarily possible to a being 
capable of creating. Eighth. It is presumptuous folly to 
make the human understanding, and even universal human 
experience, the measure of possibility. Hume had no right 
to deny the possibility of miracle, except on the supposition 
that he knew all that was possible in reference to the laws 
of nature ; they may admit of causations and uses, possibly 
of combinations which would yield miracle. The argument, 
in its logical structure, modestly assumes what the good sense 
of its author would no doubt have disclaimed, omniscience 
of possibility. 

With a brief definition of what a miracle is, we close the 
discussion of the first point in the classification of the subject. 
We shall resort for this definition simply to the scriptures,, 
which give one which accords with the intuitive judgments 
of common sense, and carries the signature of the divine 
endorsement. The Old Testament scriptures furnish one, the 
New Testament scriptures furnish another; and both are 
identical in defining the discriminating feature of the thing, 
defined; both accord with the intuitive judgment of the 
human understanding. The magicians of Egypt, when over- 
whelmed in the conflict with Moses before the court of Pha- 



MlKACLE. 283 

raoh, exclaimed, "This is the finger of God." The object 
for which those wonders were done is said to be that "the 
Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch forth 
my hand upon Egypt." The two elements of miracle as here 
discriminated are, first, the immediate exertion of God's 
power, in order to accomplish the second — that is, to furnish 
testimony. The nature of the energy employed is defined 
and asserted to be divine power; and the purpose for which 
this power was exerted is set forth — to give testimony to a 
divine interposition — that the Egyptians might know some- 
thing, and know it as coming from God. In the New Testa- 
ment, it is said that "Jesus of Nazareth was a man approved 
of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which 
God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also 
know." Here the same characteristics of miracle are set 
forth; the nature of the power as divine — something God 
did; and the purpose of its exertion — to furnish testimony 
to Jesus of Nazareth. The passage from Hebrews which 
we have used as a text is equally clear and a little more full. 
"God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders,, 
and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost accord- 
ing to his own will." Here the same characteristics are 
affirmed ; God as a witness bearing testimony, by the exertion 
of his power, and that, too, as the result of his own will. A 
miracle, then, is an act of immediate divine power, exerted 
by a direct volition of his own will, for the purpose of giving 
a testimony to some truth or to endorse some messenger claim- 
ing to come from him. This divine power may be exerted 
in different modes, for all we know; but it must clearly 
certify itself as the power of God ; or it will fail of its pur- 
pose. The general mode in which this manifestation and 
certificate of divine power is made is mainly by some action 
cognizable by human senses, which exhibit such a control of 



284 MlEACLE. 

the laws of nature as God only can exert. The order of nature 
being a product of the divine will, is controllable by the same 
power which established it ; he can modify it at will by the 
same power which established it. But God alone can do this ; 
and, by consequence, any such energy exerted upon the order 
of nature is a demonstration of an interposition of the divine 
will and power which cannot be mistaken. Miracle, then, 
becomes the personal testimony of God, bearing witness to 
the truth which he has taught by some inspired messenger 
sent by him; it certifies the messenger as sent by God. The 
method in which God may exercise his power in working a 
miracle may defy scrutiny, but the trace of his finger must 
be clear. Whether he employs a combination of higher 
natural law, competent only to himself, or whether he accom- 
plishes the result by fiat power directly exerted, suspending, 
reversing, or positively violating the order of nature, is really 
immaterial to the just conception of miracle. Some specula- 
tors, hypothetic ally admitting miracle as fact, impeach its 
value as testimony to a divine interposition, on the allegation 
that the conceded miraculous fact is the product of higher 
natural laws, and as such is no proof of a divine interposition. 
But if the bringing of those higher natural laws into play, 
superseding ordinary natural law, is only possible by the 
divine power and will, the actual energy of those laws is still 
proof of the interposition of the divine will. A great chemist 
can combine natural law in a manner that will certify his 
superior abilities in chemical science; a chemist of still 
higher ability can make combinations of natural law which 
the other cannot make; and the superior combination will be 
a reliable register of the superior power concerned in the 
result. The Duke of Argyle formed the theory on this 
ground, that all miracle was the result of combinations of 
natural law by the divine power, and contended that the 



MlKACLE. 285 

proof of a divine interposition was not diminished by the use- 
of natural law to work out the result. The only objection 
to this theory is that it is too broad. It is doubt- 
less true in some cases of miracle; it is not proved of all. 
The evidential power of miracle is not discredited when the 
divine worker sees fit to employ a higher natural law to 
reverse the action of a lower, because the combination is only 
possible to Almighty power. The result shows that the sphere 
of Deity is invaded, and thus becomes proof of a divine 
interposition. The grant of life is solely within the sphere 
of divine energy; whence the raising of a dead man to life 
is accepted as a true miracle. In raising 1 from the dead, the 
ordinary laws of life are immediately set in motion; but the 
renewed action of the forces of nature are due to will and 
power divine, and not to the undirected energy of some 
natural law. All the results of natural law in human hands 
are due to the interposition of human will and human know- 
ledge ; and it does not appear why the divine will and know- 
ledge cannot be credited with the ability to combine natural 
law to produce results which will certify the interposition 
of his will. It is apparent that God has used more than 
one method in working miracle; he has employed even the 
lower natural laws in some cases; he has employed his fiat 
will in others; and both have served the great purpose for 
which he has intervened. That purpose is to place God in the 
attitude of a witness to man — to give his sanction to the truth 
he has sent — and to sustain the credentials of the human 
messenger he has employed to proclaim it. This purpose of 
miracle, so clearly asserted in the scripture definition of it, 
is of immense value in more than one way; and among- 
these is the presentation of a test to discriminate between 
true and false miracle, as we shall see hereafter. It is plain 
that any one coming with the claim to be a messenger of God,. 



286 MlEACLE. 

bringing his commands and instructions, must prove his com- 
mission; he must authenticate his credentials; God must 
certify him. Until he is so certified, men have no right to 
receive him as a divine commissioner, or his message as a 
communication from God. Hence the inseparable correlation 
between revelation and miracle. Even in those cases where a 
prophet is sent with a message of warning, or a call to 
reformation of manners without the power to work miracle, 
his appeal is always to the previous law, which was sustained 
by miracle, as the ultimate basis of his own fresh announce- 
ments. But in all cases where a new system was to be estab- 
lished, or a new development was to be given to an old 
divinely-appointed system, the miracle appears with the new 
revelation of the divine will. In the one branch of this 
correlation, truth from God is revealed; in the other, God 
certifies that it is from him; and whenever a messenger 
announcing a truth from God is able to appeal to the power 
of God in proof of his claim, the deepest convictions of the 
human soul bow to the irresistible demonstration, for it is 
God who bears the witness. 



MIRACLE. 

SECOND SERMON. 

"God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and 
with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own 
will." — Hebrews ii. 4. 

THE two points to be investigated at this stage of the dis- 
cussion are — 

First, the possibility of proving a miracle. 

Second, whether the miracle of the gospel is actually 
proved, and by a species of proof which draws an ineffaceable 
line of distinction between the miracle of the gospel and the 
miracle of the calendar. 

1. The assertion of Hume, and many of his successors, is 
that no amount of proof can establish a miracle, because it 
is contrary to the course of nature, and therefore impossible. 
This alleged impossibility has already been discussed, and 
the unsoundness of the allegation has been shown. The set- 
tlement of the question of possibility carries with it the settle- 
ment of the question of proof. If a thing is possible to be, 
it can be proved to be ; otherwise there is no right to assert 
its possibility. If a thing can happen, it can be shown to 
happen; the possibility of being carries the possibility of 
proof. This connection between possibility of being and possi- 
bility of proof is intuitively obvious, and it is alone sufficient 
to settle the question. 

But, in addition to this inflexible connection between being 
and proof, the analysis of a miraculous fact will lead to the 
same conclusion. Take the case of the man born blind, 



288 Miracle. 

restored to sight by a word of Christ. The fact of a man's- 
being born blind can certainly be proved. The fact of his 
application to a certain person for relief in the presence of 
many people, some friendly and some unfriendly to the per- 
son applied to, is also capable of proof. The fact of a word 
being spoken commanding the restoration of the eyesight pre- 
sents no difficulty of proof. The fact of the man's actual 
ability to see immediately after the word of command was- 
spoken, is as capable of proof as that any other man sees. 
These are all the parts of a miraculous fact, as a simple 
physical event subject to human inspection. What part of 
it is incapable of proof ? ' The nature of the power employed 
is not a part of the fact; it is an inference from the fact,, 
and may be more or less clear ; but the fact itself is capable 
of proof, because each separate element of the fact is capable 
of proof. The blindness from birth, the incapacity of the 
physical structure of the eye, the word spoken — the only 
apparent secondary instrumentality employed, the restoration 
of the structure of the eye, and the actual power of vision 
instantly after the word of command was spoken, are all 
plainly capable of positive proof. If any one is disposed to* 
doubt the significance of the fact, so far as our present point 
is concerned, let it be so; that is a matter which may be 
relegated to subsequent investigation. Our inquiry for the- 
present is simply the possibility of proving the fact itself, 
whatever may be its significance — by whatever power the- 
result may have been produced. Such a fact will authenticate 
itself and demonstrate its origin; but that authentication 
is an inference from the fact, not a part of the fact itself; 
and even allowing it to be of doubtful origin, the fact itself 
is unquestionably capable of proof, which is the point we are^ 
now discussing. Supposing such a fact proved, the fact would 
be proof of its origin in a divine interposition, because it 



MlRACLE. 28D 

manifestly involves the exercise of creative power, and is 
clearly beyond the power of any other being. The mind 
intuitively recognizes in such an act the exertion of the same 
power which originally made the eye, for it is the making 
of an eye. An act manifesting an energy of creative power 
certifies its own origin, and demonstrates the presence and 
the power of God. The wonder is a sign of his will, for no 
other being is- capable of creative energy. 

From these two considerations then, 1 first, that the possi- 
bility of miracle carries the possibility of its proof; and 
second, from the analysis of a miraculous fact as a simple 
physical entity, every part of which is clearly provable, the 
capability of the miracle to be proved is sufficiently estab- 
lished. 

So clear is the demonstration of the possibility of miracle 
on the datum of a personal God, and so resistless is the truth 
that if possible it is provable, that many of the later sceptics 
have openly receded from Hume's ground, and take up a new 
position. They concede the possibility and the provability 
of miracle, and now assert that the miracle of the gospels 
is not proved. The possibility of miracle is simply admitted 
as a bare possibility ; but they deny that that possibility has 
ever passed over into fact. They admit that miracle could 
be proved, if it should happen; but deny that it has ever 
been proved to have actually happened. Renan says, in so 
many words, "We do not say a miracle is impossible; we 
say only no miracle has ever yet been proved." Froude takes 
the ground that the evidence of the 2Tew Testament miracles 
is of no more force than the testimony of the miracles of the 
Roman calendar, or of mesmeric or spiritualistic wonders. 
He says, "On human evidence, the miracles of St. Teresa 

1 Quoted by Froude, Short Studies, p. 190. 
19 



290 Miracle. 

and St. Francis of Assissi are as well established as those 
of the !New Testament." x This clearly makes up the issue 
for our present inquiry. 

The question now is whether the miracle of the gospels is, 
or is not, proved in point of fact, and whether it is not proved 
by a species of evidence which draws a broad line of distinc- 
tion between it, on one side, and the alleged miracle of the 
Roman calendar, and the wonders of mesmerism and spiritual- 
ism on the other. The case is thus stated by Fronde, "The 
lives of the saints of the Catholic Church, from the time of the 
apostles until the present day, are a complete tissue of mira- 
cles, resembling and rivalling those of the gospels. Some of 
these stories are romantic and imaginative; some clear, lit- 
eral, and prosaic ; some rest on mere tradition ; some on the 
sworn testimony of eye-witnesses; some are obvious fables; 
some are as well authenticated as facts of such a kind can be 
authenticated at all. The Protestant Christian rejects every 
one of them — rejects them without inquiry; involves those 
for which there is good authority, and those for which there 
is none or little, in one absolute, contemptuous and sweeping 
denial. The Protestant Christian feels it more likely, in the 
words of Hume, that men should deceive or be deceived, than 
that the laws of nature should be violated. At this moment 
we are beset with reports of conversations with spirits, of 
tables miraculously lifted, of hands projected out of the world 
of shadows into this mortal life. An unusually able, accom- 
plished person, accustomed to deal with common-sense facts, 
a celebrated political economist, and notorious for business- 
like habits, assured this writer that a certain mesmerist, who 
was my informant's intimate friend, had raised a dead girl 
to life. We should believe the people who tell us these things 
in any ordinary matter : they would be admitted in a court 
1 Froude, Short Studies, p. 180. 



MlEACLE. 291 

of justice as good witnesses in a criminal case, and a jury 
would hang a man on their word. The person just now 
alluded to is incapable of telling a wilful lie ; yet our experi- 
ence of the regularity of nature on one side is so uniform, and 
our experience of the capacities of human folly, on the other, 
is so large, that when people tell us these wonderful stories, 
most of us are contented to smile; we do not care so much 
as to turn out of our way to examine them." 

Upon this statement we have only to remark that, so far 
as Protestant Christians who understand the ground of the 
Christian faith are concerned, they are not at all solicitous 
to deny any fact well authenticated upon any subject what- 
ever, whether miracles of saints, or phenomena of mesmerism, 
or facts of spiritualism, or wonders of Hindoo jugglery. A 
fact is a fact; it is an actual occurrence which cannot be 
disputed ; and one fact cannot possibly damage any other fact 
or interfere with the consequences, logical or practical, which 
grow out of it. The admission of these alleged facts of 
mediaeval miracle cannot possibly discredit the miraculous 
events of the gospel history. All we should require in order 
to secure their full admission is proof of the facts asserted. 
Whether we should agree to the inference from the facts, and 
accept the alleged origin of the fact, is another question. Nor 
do we feel it to be at all necessary to impeach the general 
credibility of the witnesses of legendary miracle, or even their 
special credibility in reference to the facts alleged. The 
facts, when proved, may be admitted, without admitting any 
special theory of their origin or significance, or at all shaking 
the supreme authority of the gospel miracle. We are fully 
prepared to admit all such facts of saintly miracle as may 
be fairly proved. If there were no such wonders developed 
in the history of the church, prophecy would be falsified. 
The Apostle Paul distinctly foretold that a power designated 



292 Miracle. 

as "the man of sin" should be revealed, "sitting in the temple 
of God," "whose coming should be after the working of Satan, 
with all power, and signs, and lying wonders." To admit 
the alleged facts, when truly proved, is not only candid and 
honest, but is needful to vindicate prophecy. The admission 
of the facts does not carry the admission of their alleged 
miraculous origin, nor of any doctrine which is claimed to be 
sustained by the facts. We are ready, on fair proof, to accept 
any given fact which may be proved by respectable evidence ; 
we will accept it as a mere physical event ; but the facts must 
be such as to authenticate its origin before we will admit it 
as a true divine miracle. We shall only admit such infer- 
ences from the fact, either touching its origin or the doctrine 
which is supposed to be demonstrated by the event as may be 
legitimately drawn from it. To suppose, as Froude does, that 
the Protestant Christian finds it necessary to discredit all 
the alleged wonders of mediaeval saints is a mistake. When 
no sufficient evidence sustains an allegation of fact, we do 
apply the fundamental law of nature to support our refusal 
to accept the allegation. When sufficient evidence is furnished 
to prove the fact, we apply the same test to ascertain the 
nature of the fact as far as the test may be applicable. But 
our chief reliance for the detection of false or mistaken mira- 
cle are the scripture tests of genuine miracle. The principles 
upon which Protestant Christians justify their firm adherence 
to the miracles of the gospel, and impeach the alleged miracles 
of saints and pagans, even when they admit the facts alleged, 
will be explained and vindicated as we proceed. 

It is asserted by some sceptics that time weakens the force 
of evidence, and that the evidence of the gospel miracle has 
been so far obscured by the lapse of ages that it cannot now 
command a rational assent. It is true that the lapse of time 
does have a tendency to obscure evidence, but whether it will 



MlEACLE. 293 

actually succeed in obliterating the evidence will depend on 
the means adopted to preserve the transmission of the evi- 
dence. This position of the opponents of miracle raises the 
inquiry, What are the conditions on which a reliable account 
of events can be safely transmitted through long periods of 
time? This is the first point to be settled. If the history 
of the facts can be safely transmitted, it is manifestly a con- 
fusion of thought to impeach the evidence solely on the 
ground of time. A thing true, an actual occurrence, is forever 
true. The proof of its truth at the time of its occurrence is 
forever reliable proof. The only thing to be done, in order 
to secure the rational acceptance of the events through time 
indefinitely protracted, is to provide a reliable method of 
transmitting the evidence. If that evidence did once really 
prove the facts, it will prove them forever ; and it is absurd 
to talk of the lapse of time obliterating or discrediting evi- 
dence. If the evidence can be reliably transmitted, it will 
remain good proof forever. What, then, are the conditions 
of a reliable transmission of evidence, particularly in ages 
before the improved method and guarantee of printing was 
available for the purpose ? How could we, for example, trans- 
mit for twenty centuries any given facts of our contemporary 
history ? 

1. Obviously, among the first things to be done would be 
to form a record of the facts by persons thoroughly informed 
of them. Such a record will be indispensable; first, as a 
permanent repertory of the facts; and second, to give full 
force and effect to another set of guarantees of vital import- 
ance, and to prevent their being robbed of their testimonial 
force by the lapse of time and events. 

2. One of these guarantees is found in the second expedient 
necessary to the reliable transmission of the facts. This is 
simply the formation of an organization of men, permanent 



294 Miracle. 

in its existence, capable of an endless succession from genera- 
tion to generation, like a civil state or a Masonic order, with 
an order of officers to take charge of the facts and the record 
of them, and by perpetual teaching from day to day, and 
from week to week, keep the facts perpetually before the 
public from generation to generation. By means of such an 
institution, founded at the time when the facts occurred, and 
charged with the official duty of keeping them perpetually 
alive before the public mind — with the written record to pre- 
vent misapprehension and misstatement of the facts — the 
possibility of a reliable transmission of any events, through 
any conceivable length of time, is demonstratively shown. 
Such an endless organization and order of men, guided by 
the written record, can give the needed guarantee against the 
erasive power of time and events. 

3. A third expedient to transmit evidence through long 
periods of time is to establish monumental memorials of the 
events — at least, of one or more of the most prominent or 
important of the series — in formal commemoration of them. 
This is another effective method of transmitting evidence. 
These memorials may be of two kinds, stationary and move- 
able. A granite shaft erected in memory of a great man or 
a great event is a testimony to the fact it commemorates as 
long as it shall stand. A contemporary record explanatory 
of the purpose for which it was erected will not only be a 
testimony additional to the testimony of the shaft itself, but 
may be of great value in preserving the testimonial signifi- 
cance of the monument. The pyramids of Egypt disclose 
only a part of their significance as the tombs of the Pharaohs ; 
it is obvious that a contemporary record explanatory of all 
their designs would greatly enhance their power and value as 
testimonies. The second class of memorial monuments are 
not confined to one place; they are moveable; they consist 






Miracle. 295 

of simple actions and days, or months, or years, to which 
significant meanings are attached; and are equally powerful 
as memorials, and less destructible than stationary monu- 
ments, and are not confined to any locality. The month of 
July is a memorial of Julius Caesar. The bread and wine 
of the Lord's Supper is a memorial of the death of Christ. 
The first day of the week is a memorial monument of his 
resurrection. The living organization of the church is a 
grand memorial of the influence and the doctrine of the Naza- 
rene, just in the same way that the Mormon Church is a 
memorial monument of the influence and doctrine of Joe 
Smith. Anything to which a significance can be attached 
by statute law, by custom, or conventional agreement, can 
be made a significant memorial; and as long as it lasts it 
will carry the meaning of which it has been constituted a 
vehicle. The influence of a contemporary record in pre- 
serving the testimonial significance of such a monument is 
obvious in producing such an effect and in illustrating the 
value of such a record. 

4. Another powerful agency in transmitting evidence of 
facts is the interweaving of the facts themselves, or of the 
doctrines and institutions based upon the facts, with the 
public civil history or the governmental institutions of nation- 
alities existing at the time the facts occurred; first, his- 
torically as a part of the national annals, and second, into 
the national legislation. The testimony to the facts is thus 
widened, from the basis of a personal and propagandist testi- 
mony, to that of public and entirely independent evidence. 
The legislation of the United States Congress in relation to 
Mormonism will be forever a resistless testimony to the exist- 
ence and peculiarities of the Mormon sect. Equally decisive 
will be the history of the country, a testimony to the same 
facts. Many persons who seem to be insensible to th£ evidence 



296 MlEACLE. 

of the institutions and doctrines of Christianity as set forth 
by the apostles are impressed by the history and legislation 
of the Koman Empire in relation to the subject. 

Facts and evidence thus transmitted — put upon record by 
eye-witnesses of the facts — placed in the hands of an endless 
organization of men, for the purpose of a perpetual daily 
and weekly proclamation of the facts from generation to gen- 
eration, certified by memorial monuments in various forms, 
universally recognized as such and confirmed as such by the 
record made by the witnesses, and at once and increasingly 
interwoven with the public history legislation of nations — 
facts so certified can be reliably transmitted through any 
period of time, however protracted; and the sceptical pre- 
tence that time has weakened the proofs of Christianity is 
seen to be without foundation. The simple truth is that no 
facts of human history have ever been transmitted by arrange- 
ments so elaborate, complete and effective as the miracles of 
the New Testament. 

We are now ready to enter on the question of the actual 
proof of the Christian miracles, and to point out the powerful 
line of distinction which discriminates between them and the 
wonders of paganism and of the mediaeval legend. 

1. The first grand mark of genuine miracle is the fact 
which draws the first grand line of distinction between the 
miracle of the gospel and the "lying wonders" of the man of 
sin, which Froude pronounces equally proved and equally 
credible. This fact is one which is unquestioned by any party, 
that the canon of revelation is closed. Divine miracle is 
inseparably correlated with a revelation from God; the 
miracle of the calendar is invariably dissociated from a reve- 
lation from God. The close of the canon is clearly proved 
by the last words of the sacred writings, pronouncing a curse 
upon any who should either add to, or take from, the words of 



MlEACLE. 297 

the prophecy of this book. We have already seen the direct 
and inseparable connection between revelation and miracle. 
The testimony of the scriptures, which is authoritative as 
between Protestants and Eomanists, clearly settles that the 
use and purpose of miracle is to make God a witness to truth 
which he himself has ordered to be made known to men. 
This is the character of miracle as denned in both the Old 
and ^"ew Testament scriptures. The necessity of such a 
divine testimony is obvious. The mystery of the conditions 
of human life has always created a demand for information 
touching the future life. Imposters have found in this con- 
dition of human feeling a wide field of operation for their 
arts of religious deception. The whole value of their teach- 
ing is conditioned upon its being a revelation from God; 
no testimony of any other being is considered worth anything, 
simply because men know their destinies are to be controlled 
by the supreme power, and they are, therefore, only concerned 
to know from him the terms and conditions of future well- 
being. All is dependent upon his favor, and no one is com- 
petent to speak for him but himself, or one sent by him. 
Whenever, therefore, an agent comes with the claim that 
he has been sent by God to announce his will, God must certify 
him. His claim must be proved, or it is absolutely inad- 
missible ; and as he claims to come from God, no other witness 
but God himself is possibly allowable. God must testify to 
his official character as his ambassador, or else no man to 
whom the message comes can rely upon what he says as really 
the mind of God. Hence the inseparable correlation between 
revelation and miracle. When revelation is found, miracle 
is found ; they stand in a fixed logical relation to each other. 
Isov is the sceptical sneer that the Christian argument is a 
gross sample of the sophism — reasoning in a circle, proving 
the revelation by the miracle and the miracle by the revela- 



298 MlEACLE. 

tion — at all founded in fact. The Christian polemic proves 
revelation by miracle, and miracle by its own independent 
and appropriate evidence. The correlation between miracle 
and revelation is a correlation like that between husband and 
wife, or between father and son ; the one notion carries the 
other, because they are inseparable. When God would reveal 
his will, miracle is seen ; when miracle is seen, revelation is 
seen ; and when revelation ceases, miracle ceases. Here, then, 
is the first fatal objection to the alleged miracle of the Roman 
calendar. The canon is closed; revelation from God has 
ceased, and real miracle has ceased with it. We may admit 
the alleged facts of the calendar miracle; but they cannot 
be true divine miracle, whatever else they may be. They 
may be the result of the interposition of other beings, human 
or even supernatural; they are certainly not the result of 
divine power. We do not assert the actual truth of legendary 
miracle, nor yet their origin in the intervention of super- 
natural beings other than the one supreme divinity ; we only 
say that, hypothetically admitting the facts as they are 
claimed to be, they stand discredited as true miracle wrought 
by the power of God, by the irresistible warrant of the scrip- 
tural and inseparable correlation between revelation and 
miracle. The canon is closed, and true miracle has ceased. 
What revelation from God, additional to the closed canon 
of the sacred books, did St. Ignatius and St. Francis bring 
to the world? If they brought one, the words of St. John 
in Patmos are falsified. If they did not bring one, their 
alleged miracles are discredited ; they are not true signatures 
of the Almighty, whatever else they may be. This mark of 
true miracle also vindicates the exercise of that sound com- 
mon-sense which Protestants have always applied to the mira- 
cles of the Roman Catholic body, by applying promptly the 
uniformity of nature to all such events, in advance of inquiry,, 



Miracle. 299 

and thus rejecting them as divine miracle without the least 
hesitation, while at the same time standing ready to accept 
all of fact in the allegation which may be proved to be true. 
They promptly discredit the miraculous character imputed 
to the alleged event because the close of revelation and the 
consequent end of divine miracle leaves the uniformity of 
nature to the undisturbed operation of natural law. It also 
leaves the facts of legendary miracle to be explained in some 
other way than the predication of divine power. Our appeal 
against the miracle of the Roman calendar rests firmly on the 
close of the sacred canon on one side, and the general uni- 
formity of nature on the other. Fronde 1 sneers at the dis- 
tinction, but as we shall further see, it is capable of a complete 
vindication. The miracle of the gospels and the miracle of 
the calendar rest on very different foundations, and there is 
no inconsistency in accepting the one class and rejecting the 
other. Mere miracle of benevolence, apart from revelation, 
finds no countenance in the Word of God. The dictum of 
the scriptures is uniform ; Christ did many benevolent mira- 
cles, but they were all done that his works might bear witness 
of him. In all the long and splendid series of his wonderful 
works, the relation of the act of power to a revelation from 
God was conspicuous. That relation must always appear; 
and where there is no revelation, there is no true miracle. 
This test sweeps wholly away the long list of lengendary won- 
ders, and entirely discredits them as divine miracle, whatever 
else they may be. 

2. The second grand mark of true miracle, discriminating 
it from false, is that true miracle is never done in favor of 
a religion already established; it always has either a con- 
structive or a revolutionary purpose. It is always the signa- 
ture of a fresh revelation from God, and is designed either 
1 Froude, Short Studies, p. 192. 



300 MlEACLE. 

to give an original statement of truth from heaven, or to 
authorize the development of an old, already divinely estab- 
lished, system into a new form. God alone has the right to 
•do either, and for either his power may be displayed to 
authenticate his will. All the miracle of the Old Testament 
was done to confirm the successive revelations to the ancient 
church. The miracle of the New Testament was to authorize 
the changes in the old law and the old function of the kingdom 
made necessary by the alteration of its character from a 
symbolic and non-propagandist institution, into a non- 
symbolic and positively active system of aggression. This test 
again sweeps away the miracle of the calendar ; they are all 
miracles of mere benevolence apart from revelation, and in 
favor of a faith already established, but which is conceived 
to need the support of perpetual miracle. True miracle 
always possesses an original or a revolutionary purpose. The 
miracle of the Roman calendar is purely conservative, accord- 
ing to their own theory; they are done in the presence of 
witnesses interested in the established faith, and under cir- 
cumstances which cannot possibly lend any additional or inde- 
pendent weight to the allegation of the fact or to the support 
of the faith. 

3. The third grand mark of true miracle is that the act 
wrought must be one in keeping and consistency with the 
dignity of Almighty God, and that the act must authenticate 
itself, both in its intrinsic dignity and in its definite demon- 
stration of divine supernatural power. That any act per- 
formed by the direct energy of the divine will, for the purpose 
of certifying truth involving the eternal interests of an im- 
mortal race, must possess a suitable dignity, is intuitively 
obvious. This test alone discredits the so-called miracle 
of the Apochryphal 'New Testament. In that book, which 
is a collection of spurious writings of the early ages of the 



MlRACLE. 301 

Christian era, an attempt is made to delineate the supposed 
incidents in the childhood and unrecorded period of the life 
of Christ. He is represented as exercising miraculous power 
in his early youth for puerile purposes — turning dirt-pies- 
into food, making birds of mud, and causing his to fly, which 
those of his companions could not do, and withering the arm 
of a comrade who had angered him. Such allegations are- 
discredited upon the hare statement of them. An immense 
proportion of the millions of alleged miracles which are said 
to be constantly performed in the bosom of the Papal body 
are of little or no more dignity. Two crows were long ex- 
hibited in Lisbon which were said to have saved a ship from 
wreck and guided it into port. An image found by 'a dog- 
in a hole is alleged to have wrought miraculous cures. A 
hole is said to have been made in a marble slab by the fall of 
the Host upon its surface, in order to convince an infidel. 
The Bambino of Ara Coeli, an image of the Virgin, about 
two feet high, is represented as walking to the convent, where 
it usually remained, ringing the bell, and finding admittance 
late at night. The Virgin is represented as mercifully inter- 
posing, when a mule or donkey, overtasked with a heavy 
load, met with an accident. St. Dennis once walked after 
his head was cut off, carrying his head in his hands. St. 
Martin crossed the Mediterranean, floating on his cloak. 
St. Scholastica raised a storm to keep St. Benedict one night 
in her convent, that she might enjoy the benefit of his con- 
versation. Impressions of the five wounds of Christ are not 
unfrequently made on the bodies of favored individuals — a 
feat recently done in substance, in the city of ~N"ew York, both 
by a spiritualistic medium and by an ordinary juggler. The 
Roman Breviary — the standard of papal devotion, constantly 
in the hands of the priesthood — is full of assertions of just 
such puerilities. With no disposition to be harsh in the judg- 



302 Miracle. 

ment of such things, every candid, common-sense mind must 
at once perceive the incongruity between such acts and the 
ascription of them to the infinite God. Yet these seem to be 
the highest forms in which the disciplined intellect of the 
Roman priesthood can conceive of the form of miraculous 
acts. How vast the difference between these conceptions and 
those of the Apochryphal New Testament, on the one side, 
and the simple, but grand, delineations of the prophets of 
Israel and the fishermen of Galilee ! It can only be accounted 
for on the supposition that the Hebrew teachers simply related 
facts in the history of Israel and in the life of the Nazarene ; 
and that the grandeur and majesty were in the facts related, 
and not in their conceptions of the possible in miracle. The 
miracles of Moses and the old prophets, of Messiah and the 
apostles, were all on a scale of sublimity which the human 
understanding intuitively recognizes as worthy of God the 
Almighty. The judgments on Egypt, the passage of the 
millions of Israel through the sea, the fire falling from 
heaven on the drenched altar of Carmel, the camp of the 
Assyrian, with its 185,000 dead soldiers, lying in the pale 
moonlight, under their unlowered banners; the chariot of 
fire whirling down on the travelling prophets, the raising of 
the dead, the storm bridled as it rushed over the midnight 
lake, the earthquake and mid-day darkness at the crucifixion, 
the healing and feeding of thousands — to compare these grand 
acts with such puerile follies as the Eoman calendar affords, 
is to shock every sensibility of the soul. Yet Froude says 
these small and grotesque inventions "resembled and rivalled 7 ' 
the awful glory of the miracle of the scriptures. To make 
the comparison in serious and good set phrase is an infinitely 
greater degradation than to compare the drivelling chatter 
of an idiot with the awful, majestic eloquence of an angel, 
reciting some grand epic of Jehovah's deeds ! All such 



MlKACLE. 303 

actions as the miracles of the scriptures carry their signifi- 
cance on their face; no power less than divine could produce 
such effects. True miracle authenticates itself. False mira- 
cle, even if the fact claimed is admitted, is not above the 
power of subordinate beings and natural agencies ; and they 
are, for the most part, utterly discredited, even as facts, by 
the mixture of absurdity and extravagance which they carry 
on the very forefront of their claim to credit. 

4. The fourth grand test of true miracle is that the miracu- 
lous action must be something plain, definite, clearly cog- 
nizable by the human senses, instantaneous in its effect, and 
performed without the use of second causes which might 
possibly be sufficient to account for the result. The object 
of miracle is to authenticate a message from God — to give 
the credentials of his ambassador. It must be public to accom- 
plish its end by affecting the convictions of those to whom 
the message is sent. It must be plain and easily apprehended, 
cognizable by the senses of the average man, and incapable 
of misapprehension. It must be all these, or it will fail of 
its purpose as testimony. This test is fully met by the miracle 
of the scripture ; it is altogether wanting in the overwhelming 
majority of the miracles of the calendar. The few of those 
latter events which were, and still are, exhibited in anything 
like a public manner, are manifestly not beyond the power 
of skillful management and of natural forces. The miracle 
of St. Januarius is frequently repeated in view of a crowd 
of spectators. A small ball of a red color, said to be the 
blood of a martyr kept in a glass vessel, is made to liquefy 
in the presence of the people. The result is not beyond the 
reach of chemical arrangements, and fails utterly to impress 
any beholder who is not already a believer in the miracle with 
any, even the least, apprehension of the presence and energy 
of divine power. It was once performed, after a positive 



304 Miracle. 

refusal, at the command of a red-capped Republican general 
of a revolutionary French army, who threatened to burn the 
church building to the ground unless the miracle was per- 
formed. It was promptly done; and no circumstance could 
have illustrated more keenly the absurdity of the pretence 
that it was genuine miracle. Such an impression of the pres- 
ence of supernatural power could not fail to be realized in 
the face of such an act as the raising of Lazarus or the- 
feeding of the multitudes in the wilderness. The celebrated 
miracles performed at the tomb of the Abbe de Paris in 1789, 
the cures at St. Winifred's Well, are not without discount 
on several serious considerations. But it is not necessary to 
deny every asserted case of relief to disease at such places, 
however justly we may impeach the allegation of a general 
or even a frequent realization of the hopes of the devotees 
who resort in crowds and at frequent periods to such mystic 
localities. It is altogether safe to admit all such instances 
of relief as can be proved to occur. They can all be accounted 
for on natural principles. The power of excited expectation, 
of faith and roused imagination, is medicinally very great — 
so great that a great German school of medical practice — the 
school of Stalil 1 — was actually founded upon it as leading 
principle. The authenticated cases of cure at St. Winifred's 
Well, and at similar places of resort in the papal territory, 
are not greater, probably, in number, or more wonderful in 
effect, than the authenticated cases of the cure of scrofula 
by the kings of England, when the practice of touching for 
the King's evil was an usage of the English crown. In both 
cases the same natural force was to be credited with the 
result; the same principle utilized by Stahl in his theory 
and practice of medicine ; the same principle by which every 
treatise upon mental science illustrates the power of the 

1 Sir William Hamilton's Discussions, p. 252. 



Miracle. 305 

imagination over the states of the body. Miracle, to effect its 
purpose, must stand clear of all such possible discounts; it 
must authenticate itself; it must authenticate itself to the 
public view — to the senses of the average man; and leave 
no room to account for the result accomplished from excited 
expectation, from shrewd arrangements, from inferior super- 
natural beings, or from skillful legerdemain or the artful 
combination of natural law. It must show the "finger of 
God," or it is worthless. 



MIRACLE. 

THIRD SERMON. 

"God also bearing thern witness, both with signs and wonders, and 
with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own 
will." — Hebrews ii. 4. 

WE resume, without preliminary, the test of true mira- 
cle, and its discrimination from false miracle. Our 
last test was that the act must he plain, cognizable by the 
senses of the average man, and done without the intervention 
of second causes which might possibly be sufficient to produce 
the effect. 

5. The fifth grand test is that the act must be performed 
openly, in public, in the presence of witness of indiscriminate 
character, as friendly or unfriendly, undesignedly brought 
together, and the act incidentally done, and without any 
formal preliminary preparation. It is not necessary that 
every individual miracle should be able to pass this test, and 
one or two more which will be mentioned, especially when 
a given miracle is a part of a system of miracle marking 
some grand transition in the divinely revealed form and ordi- 
nances of the kingdom. But the system, as a whole, must be 
able to stand this test ; and the authority of those which are 
done in the public view will uphold the few isolated instances 
of less publicity and in the presence of chosen witnesses. The 
object of miracle being to authenticate a commission from 
God which is concerned with men generally, must be ad- 
dressed to the public mind. This publicity is necessary to 
the end in view, which is to command the confidence of those 



MlEACLE. 307 

to whom the divine message is sent. Publicity is also im- 
portant to the support and. perfection of the evidence, when 
it is transmitted beyond the age of the eye-witnesses of the 
original act of the supernatural power. The incidental and 
undesigned performance of the act, without formal prepara- 
tion, in the presence of witnesses, indiscriminately and unde- 
signedly brought together, is needful to repel all suspicion 
of craft and artful management, both in the production of 
the result and in the packed and prearranged proof of it. 
This test is met by the gospel miracle ; it is altogether unmet 
by the miracle of the calendar. The vast bulk of the latter 
class consists of actions done in private, often with no witness 
whatever, often only in the presence of a few witnesses inter- 
ested in securing belief for the act, or disqualified as wit- 
nesses by personal defects as such, or by the circumstances 
in which they became acquainted with the alleged occur- 
rence. The miracle of the calendar is often performed in 
apartments of religious houses, in which the possible facilities 
for the management of a scenic display are without assignable 
limits. They are witnessed by devotees, either weak, and as 
such easily deceived; or bigoted in favor of the expected 
demonstration, and as such ready to receive any desired im- 
pression; or else unable to penetrate the whole of the case, 
and thus unable to testify to the case as a whole, no matter 
how generally intelligent or worthy of credit. The miracle 
of St. Januarius' blood is not only discredited by the fact that 
the liquefaction is not beyond the reach of chemical reaction, 
but by this test of incompetent scrutiny by the witnesses who 
are otherwise, it may be, worthy of confidence. ~No doubt 
can exist touching the fact of the liquefaction ; but the pre- 
arranged scene, the place, the actors, and the entire want of 
opportunity for a competent preliminary and concurrent 
investigation, all discredit it as an exhibition of divine power. 



308 MlEACLE. 

On the other hand, the miracle of the gospel was done in 
open daylight, on public streets and highways, in the crowded 
temple and on the densely-thronged mountain side, in villages 
and towns, in houses filled with an indiscriminate multitude 
of eager, but non-partisan beholders, before Scribe and Phari- 
see, priest and doctor of the law — jealous, watchful, and 
filled with the keenest and most vehement desire to disbelieve 
themselves and to discredit to others all that was done. There 
was no secret preparation, no formal discrimination of inter- 
ested witnesses, in whose presence alone the wonder was to be 
done. The objection to the proof of the resurrection of Christ,, 
drawn from his not showing himself to the Jewish public, 
but to selected witnesses after his rising, is wholly removed 
from suspicion, and left to be vindicated by its own sufficient 
reasons: First, by the number of the chosen witnesses,, 
amounting, according to the statements of the record, to be- 
tween six and eight hundred persons; second, by the effect 
produced on the character of the disciples ; third, by the line 
of conduct adopted by the Jewish and Roman authorities; 
by the tremendous movement produced on the Israelite public, 
bringing multitudes into the church of the Nazarene, includ- 
ing many of the hostile priests ; and, fourth, by three years 
and a half exertion of miraculous power by the resurrected 
Christ himself. Surely it was a consummation in keeping 
with the awful glory of such a life as he had led ! Year 
after year, in every part of the land, in the face of the whole 
public of the clay, in street and market, in the crowded tem- 
ple, amid the innumerable masses which thronged his jour- 
neys through the country, before Scribe and envious priest, 
in every possible circumstance which could discredit the 
notion of art or deception, collusion or fraud, in the glorious 
actor, or of interest, undue credulity, or incompetence of any 
sort in the witnesses of his mighty acts. Surely, if for three 



Miracle. 309 

years and six months before the present time, in every part 
of this State of Virginia, in her capital and chief towns, in 
her villages and country districts, on her mountains and her 
plains, before the thronging thousands of her people, before 
her rulers, civil and religious, her lawyers and her educated 
intellect, before persons hostile, friendly, indifferent, and 
simply curious, a thousand actions, like the curing of the 
blind, the healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, and 
the feeding of the multitudes, had been done by one man — 
surely there could be no possibility of disputing the facts 
or of impeaching the proof of them. To compare a publicity 
like this with a scenic show like the display of St. Januarius, 
is to mock the simplest dictates of intelligence in the human 
understanding. To make the proof equal in both cases, as 
Fronde does, is absurd. The resurrection of such a person 
from the dead is nothing less than a suitable ending to a 
career so amazingly different from any life ever passed in 
the whole history of the world. The publicity of the thou- 
sands upon thousands of miracles wrought by the Founder 
of the Christian faith, makes a line of distinction between 
them and the miracle of the Roman calendar so deep and 
wide that any comparison of the two is an outrage upon 
human intelligence. 

6. The sixth grand test is, that not only must miracle be 
performed openly in the face of the public, but that in some 
cases public tests must be applied — examinations made by 
public authority and by the enemies of the new system. This 
is another of the tests not needful to be applied in all cases ; 
science never deems it necessary that the entire body of the 
facts in any given subject of investigation should be examined. 
A sufficient number of them to fairly represent the force 
employed in their production is deemed altogether sufficient 
for scientific investigation of their significance. Kenan, in 



310 MlBACLE. 

his treatment of this point in the Christian theory, is singu- 
larly unfortunate. He claims that the investigation — the 
only reliable one, according to his view — should have been 
made by an assembly of scientific savans; and denies posi- 
tively that any investigation was ever made at all into any 
act performed by Jesus of Nazareth. It is obvious, as a 
reply to the first allegation in his objection, that he has 
confounded an examination into a fact, for which other than 
scientific men are fully competent, with an examination into 
the cause of the fact, for which scientific men might possibly 
be only competent. In this whole war upon miracle, the 
proof of fact is perpetually confounded with the proof of 
cause. The nature of the power employed is perpetually 
confounded with the fact which is developed. The nature 
of the power employed is an inference from the fact, but 
cannot logically be employed to discredit the fact, or to be 
confounded with the fact. A fact is a fact, no matter what 
causes it; and the apologetic power of miracle is that the 
fact warrants no other assignment of cause but creative 
energy. A congress of savans is not necessary to the proof of 
facts ; a convention of average men is fully competent to the 
proof of facts. Moreover, Christlieb has justly remarked 
that the French Academy, which at one time rejected all faith 
in lightning rods, vaccination, and the existence of meteorites, 
might have proved no more trustworthy in their judgment 
of miracles. A scientific body is far from infallible, even in 
its own sphere — the search for causes — and cannot command 
confidence upon their scientific character merely, and apart 
from their rendered reasons. But in a system of facts, and 
in a question of fact and not of causes, it is obviously inad- 
missible to deny the value of all investigation and testimony 
except what is purely scientific. 

Renan is even more unfortunate in the second allegation 



MlKACLE. 311 

of his objection, in which he denies that any investigation 
"was ever made into any reported miraculous fact in the life of 
Christ, at the time of its occurrence. He deserves the curt 
rebuke of Christlieb for want of candor or want of memory. 
Two cases underwent examination — one on a single, delib- 
erate scale, and the other on a repeated scale. The case of 
the man born blind, restored to sight by a word from the 
lips of Jesus, was examined at length by an assembly of the 
eager enemies of Christ, and the examination is reported 
at length in one entire chapter in one of the gospels. The 
parents of the man were examined on one part of the case, 
the congenital blindness of their son; the man himself was 
examined on another part of the case, and was vigorously 
cross-examined as to what was done to him — and both in 
public. Bethany was visited by thousands from Jerusalem, 
over and over again, to see Lazarus after he was raised from 
the dead. The facts were of such a kind as to admit of no 
dispute ; and the result was so powerful on the public judg- 
ment that the enemies of the Nazarene actually plotted 
against the life of Lazarus, to extinguish the influence of 
that wonderful event in his history. No such open and free 
canvassing of the facts by the general public, and by the 
enemies of a system, has ever marked a miracle of the calen- 
dar. There has been a laborious travesty of the marks of true 
miracle by the architects of calendar miracle ; but they have 
not been able to contrive any of a character to command the 
confidence of a candid and impartial understanding. The 
miracle of the gospel, in true test cases, was submitted to 
the open and unrestrained investigation of the best educated 
and the most hostile intellect of the time, as well as to the 
repeated scrutiny of the general public; and the facts were 
not only proved, but admitted. The very enemies of the 
gospel testified to the facts when they attempted to account 



312 MlEACLE. 

for them by Satanic agency. Something must have been done, 
by the admission of the Pharisees themselves, which Satan, 
in their judgment, alone could do. 

7. The seventh grand test of true miracle, which pro- 
foundly discriminates it from false miracle, is that the alleged 
miraculous acts should be generally recognized, not only by 
the partisans of the new system, but by the universal public 
of the day as actual occurrences, known to the public, not by 
the testimony of individual advocates, by their own knowledge 
of the facts. It is a remarkable mistake to suppose, as many 
do, that the facts of the history of Christ stand only on the 
testimony of the twelve official witnesses; they were the 
official, but not the only witnesses. They give us the detailed 
statement of the facts ; but indisputable facts, outside of their 
official testimony, make all the public of the time witnesses of 
the truth of their statements. It is historically demonstrable 
that out of the career of Jesus of Nazareth, and by the teach- 
ing of his doctrine, a new institution 'then came upon the 
stage. It won thousands upon thousands of the Jewish people 
into its discipline ; even a great company of the hostile priests 
were obedient to the faith at last. The apostles boldly ap- 
pealed to the miracles of Christ as the ground of their claim 
to the faith and obedience of the people. They boldly ap- 
pealed to the knowledge of the people themselves about these 
wonders of divine power. They boldly proclaimed that "Jesus 
of Nazareth was a man approved of God among you by 
miracles, and wonders, and signs which God did by him in 
the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know." They did not 
pretend or attempt to prove these events merely by their 
own testimony ; they appealed to the knowledge of the people 
themselves as to the facts. They declared, as matter of fact, 
that those things had been done in the midst of the people, 
and that they knew it. This was absolute madness — it could 



MlEACLE. 313 

not be called lying — if the statement was not true. Let us 
suppose a parallel case; let us suppose that a group of men 
should appear in this State, with the design of uprooting 
Christianity, interwoven as it is with the highest interests 
of the existing civil order, and entrenched in the affections 
and prejudices of the people. Suppose this group of propa- 
gandists should appeal, as their warrant to make the new 
development which they desired, to miracles alleged to have 
heen wrought for the last three years and a half, all over the 
State, in city and village, in town and country, in the presence 
of well-nigh the whole population of the Commonwealth. 
Suppose that these propagandists should allege that these 
wonders were known to the whole people; not upon the 
say-so of these agents, but upon their own knowledge. Sup- 
pose, now, that there was not one word of truth in the whole 
allegation. What effect would be produced by it? Why, it 
would scarcely excite a smile; the allegation would be so 
transparently absurd.' Perhaps some of the more humane 
among the listeners to the grotesque absurdity might think 
of providing a place in a lunatic asylum for these poor vic- 
tims of mental hallucination. But it is absolutely certain 
that not a ripple of effect would appear upon the surface of 
society. But, now, suppose that the allegation was true, and 
that in every part of the State, in the face of well-nigh the 
whole population, for three years and a half, in town and 
country, in street and market-place, in temple and highway, 
the asserted facts had been done in the midst of the people, 
and they knew it of their own knowledge, and not merely 
on the testimony of the group of propagandist agents. Sup- 
pose, now, that these agents should proclaim, on the basis and 
warrant of these miraculous facts, thus universally known, 
that a revelation from God had made known certain truths 
and issued certain commands, to be received and obeyed by 



314 Miracle. 

all the people, what would be the effect ? It is absolutely 
certain that society would be stirred to its foundations; the 
new institutions would grow rapidly into a power in society 
and appear everywhere upon its surface; and this effect 
would be the testimony of the whole public to the facts — and 
a more impressive testimony cannot be imagined. The over- 
throw of the existing institutions, and the establishment of 
the new system as the result of an appeal to their own know- 
ledge of the facts, would make the whole people witnesses to 
the facts. The existence of the church of Christ, the actual 
renunciation of the old Judaism of Israel by thousands of 
the Jewish people and many of their priests, is the embodied 
testimony of the whole Jewish people to the miraculous facts 
which mastered their powerful attachment to the institutions 
of Moses, and enabled them to see in Christ the messenger 
of God to develop the Mosaic institutions into that higher 
form which the covenant with Abraham had promised and 
the prophets had foretold. No general public, out of their 
own independent knowledge, have ever given such testimony 
as this to the miracle of the calendar. 

8. The eighth grand test is found in the public and organ- 
ized arrangements made to permanently preserve these great 
facts of miraculous energy, and the great system of truths- 
which they support; and to secure their constant daily and 
weekly proclamation, and thus to secure their safe transmis- 
sion through all coming time. We have already seen the 
conditions of a reliable transmission of facts and evidence 
through indefinitely protracted periods of time. A record of 
the facts, and a statement of the doctrines and duties of the 
Christian system, was made by eye-witnesses and others fully 
informed of them. x\n organization of men, capable of an 
endless succession, with an order of officers whose function 
was appointed to keep the facts and doctrines committed to 



Miracle. 315 

their custody "before each successive generation as the ages 
passed, was promptly established on the old foundation of 
the Abrahamic covenant, and endowed with the character of 
an universal propaganclism. Memorial and symbolic monu- 
ments of various kinds were established ; and the interweav- 
ing of the doctrines and institutions of Christ with the history 
and legislation of the existing nationalities immediately con- 
nected with the gospel history at once began, and have gone 
on with increasing complication ever since. All these elabo- 
rate arrangements give a guarantee of reliable transmission 
of the miraculous facts of the gospel history, which stand 
absolutely alone in the history of the world. No facts in the 
past history of the whole world have ever had anything like 
the elaborate and methodical arrangements made for their 
safe transmission as those made for the transmission of the 
miracles of the Christian faith. The voice of the living 
teacher has never ceased to be heard ; the living organization 
of men has never failed; the memorial monuments have 
always borne their testimony, while the history and legislation 
of nations has continued to broaden their testimony. The 
combined efficiency of these sources of evidence has carried 
down, unimpaired, the divine basis on which the Christian 
faith rests, impregnable against all assaults. We know that 
these grand truths were proclaimed one, three, five hundred, 
ten, fifteen, eighteen hundred years ago, because the daily 
and weekly proclamation has never ceased, and that all the 
other sources of transmitting evidence have never failed. A 
change in the Sabbath day from the seventh, observed for 
two thousand years, to the first day of the week, is an inde- 
structible monument to one' event in the history of the Naza- 
rene — his resurrection from the dead. Bread and wine, sym- 
bolically significant, make a memorial monument of another 
event — his death in atonement for the sin of the world. The 



316 MlEACLE. 

grand organization of the visible church is a living monu- 
ment to his kingly authority. A regular series of acts of 
worship is likewise an inextinguishable memorial of the 
divinity of this wonderful Being. In a very brief time 
Christianity not only became prominent in the history and 
legislation of the Jews, but was speedily linked with the 
historical and legislative records of the greatest empire of 
human history — the old Roman State. Tiberius, in less than 
twenty years from the death of Christ, formally proposed to 
the Roman Senate to admit him among the gods of Rome. 
Tacitus, the greatest of the Roman historians, spoke with 
stern contempt of the rapid spread of the exitiabilis super- 
stitio of Chrestus. In no long time, and then for the long 
period of three hundred years, in ten distinct persecutions, 
the whole power of the empire under Nero, Diocletian, 
Decius, and Galerian, was exerted with remorseless energy 
to extinguish the victorious faith of the Galilean. In no 
long time, within fifty years of the death of the last apostle, 
a Christian apologist could say to the Roman Emperor, "We 
are but of yesterday, and we have filled all that belongs to 
you, the cities, the fortresses, the free towns, the very camps, 
the palace, the Senate, the forum ; we leave to you the temples 
only." All that tremendous energy of faith by which old men 
and maidens, senators and noble ladies, soldiers of the legions, 
and plebians of the imperial city, triumphed over the perse- 
cuting power of that remorseless government, testifies to the 
power of the truth as it is in Jesus. From that time until 
now, three-fourths of the human history, and a vast proportion 
of the legislation of the most important nations of the world, 
is the history and for the interests of the church and the doc- 
trines of Christ, all of which are avowedly based upon the 
three and a half years of miraculous energy in his brief life. 
On the supposition of the truth of those facts, the result is 



MlKACLE. 3 IT 

natural and somewhat proportionate. On the denial of the 
facts, the record, the endless organization, the memorial monu- 
ments, and the tremendous movement of human history are 
absolutely unaccountable anomalies. Where can the miracle 
of the calendar begin to show such an arrangement to demon- 
strate its reality, and prevent the erasure of the divine sign- 
manual by the rush of time and events ? !N"o facts of human 
history can show any parallel, or even comparable provisions 
to secure their transmission. !No facts in human history can 
trace back to their origin by a line of transmission so com- 
plete and so powerful. 

9. The ninth grand test of true miracle is prophetic an- 
nouncement beforehand. The sceptic must deal with the his- 
torical and literary fact of a record confessedly many hun- 
dred years in existence before Christ, which, after describing 
many minute circumstances connected with his person, dis- 
tinctly announced that the remarkable individual of whom 
the prophets spoke would do many wonderful works of 
miraculous power. The blind would see, the deaf hear, the 
dumb sing, and the lame man leap as the hart. Isaiah's 
prophecy is extant in the Septuagint version, which is as. 
well known to have been made near two hundred and seventy 
years before Christ as that the Bible was translated into 
English in the time of James the First. It is also extant in 
the Hebrew scriptures centuries before the Septuagint. Moses 
foretold his miracles to the Pharaoh of Egypt ; Joshua was 
foreinformed that God would put forth his power to throw 
down the walls of Jericho ; Christ told the seventy, when he 
sent them out, that they should exert a miraculous power. 
In fact, prophecy generally goes in a closer or a more distant 
relation to miracle. This test discredits utterly all the 
miracle of the calendar. The only prophecy connected with 
them completes their confusion ; it is the prediction of them 



318 Miracle. 

as the "lying wonders of the man of sin." This test is of 
correlated force; the prophecy challenges attention, awakes 
expectation, and challenges fulfilment; it adds force to the 
miracle when it occurs as an example of miraculous know- 
ledge added to a miraculous action, while the miracle demon- 
strates the prophecy to be true foreknowledge. In the light 
of this close and apparently regular connection between 
miracle and its previous announcement, we have a right to 
discredit all miracle which cannot disclose its correlated 
member in a prophetic advertisement of the coming wonder. 
This test sweeps away all the miracle of the calendar ; it con- 
firms the miracle of the gospel. The apologetic worth of this 
test is great. The previous announcement awakens expecta- 
tion and discriminates the act when accomplished. It chal- 
lenges fulfilment, as well as expectation. It confirms faith, 
because it not only challenges the divine power, but positively 
asserts its exercise — a power which can never be the instru- 
ment of deception; and when the power of God answers the 
challenge, the demonstration is complete on both sides of the 
correlation between the miracle of knowledge and the miracle 
of power. 

10. The tenth grand test of true miracle is variety and 
wealth of action. Impostors in religion economize in this 
species of proof, and sink the dignity of the event in the 
interests of practicability; they never undertake anything 
of special dignity or greatness for fear of failure in the execu- 
tion of the conception. The miracles of the calendar, which, 
taking the full period of their history as a whole, are countless 
in number, are all graduated on a narrow scale of variety, as 
well as of dignity in the actions. The healing of disease, the 
elevation of the human body in the air, the visible appearance 
of the Virgin and the saints, victorious combats with the devil 
revealed to the physical senses, winking images, and mys- 



Miracle. 319 

terious marks upon the human body, are the principal forms 
of miracle in the conceptions of the architects of the calendar. 
Of the gospel miracles, only about forty are on detailed 
record. There is something of conscious power in this stern 
economy of recital. This specific detail is no index to what 
was really done. Incidental allusions are made to multitudes 
of these wondrous acts. Great multitudes are represented 
as resorting to the Nazarene, bringing the sick from far and 
near; and the record says "he healed them," and that he 
"healed them all." Several distinct allusions of this descrip- 
tion, at different periods of his history, are suggestive of a 
wonderful multiplication of individual acts of miraculous 
energy. The three and a half years of Christ's public min- 
istry glow like the star-fretted midnight with his wondrous 
works. The apostolic age resounds with the echoes of God's 
footsteps, walking among men. The apostles wrought mira- 
cles ; but at what time the miraculous energy closed it is not 
easy to say with precision. Doubtless they followed the law 
of correlation between revelation and miracle, and ceased 
when revelation from God no longer needed his signature. 
When the canonical records were complete, and a sufficiency 
of evidence was laid up in the hands of the endless order of 
the church to secure a rational ground of confidence to all 
the coming ages, it is probable the miracle of the gospel 
ceased. It is not incredible that in the far outlying districts 
of the world, the energy was sometimes displayed in the 
hands of men who had been eye-witnesses of apostolic miracle, 
to confirm their testimony as to what they had seen the 
apostle do. 1 But it is certain that when the apostles and the 
eye-witnesses of their works had passed away, then the 
miraculous energy was withdrawn. But during the miracu- 
lous age, there was no stint in the manifestation of the 

1 See Dabney's Theology, p. 752. 



320 Miracle. 

miraculous power. Not only was there a suitable breadth 
of production, but a noble variety of sublime conceptions was 
realized in the miracle of the gospel. The raising of the 
dead; the cure of disease in manifold and, to human art, 
incurable forms ; the feeding of the enthusiastic and fainting 
multitudes in the wilderness; the repair of disabled senses 
and useless limbs; the mastery over animal nature, over 
storms and the agitated sea, over the light of the sun and 
the stability of the earth, and over the constitution of water, 
bread and wine — indicate at once the wide range and the 
grand conception of the gospel miracle. 

This, perhaps, may be the best place to answer the objection 
to the test of true miracle as found in the dignity of the 
action. A recent number of the Saturday Review excepts to 
this test, on the ground that it does not discredit every indi- 
vidual instance of the calendar miracle, nor apply to every 
individual instance of the miracle of the scriptures. This 
objection assumes that no objection can lie to a general rule 
without making it absolutely universally destructive to the 
rule. A general rule may exist, even though particular excep- 
tions may be found. Admit the allegation of the Review- 
to be true of particular instances in both classes of the miracle 
under discussion, that does not destroy the unquestionable 
prevailing character of both ; the one as marked by lowness, 
and the other by sublimity of conception. Nay, in some of 
the favorite instances on which scepticism most frequently 
dwells with scornful pleasure, it is clear that the full signifi- 
cance of the action is overlooked. Take, for example, the 
rod of Moses turned into a serpent, and devouring the serpent 
rods of the Egyptian priests. It is well known that the 
animal and reptile creation afforded symbols of the divine 
powers to the old Egyptians, and were worshipped as such. 
It is also known that the Egyptian priesthood had in their 



MlBACLE. 321 

possession either a peculiar serpent, which could be stiffened, 
or a peculiar process by which any serpent could be stiffened 
in the semblance of a rod or wand, and restored to animation 
and movement at will. This religious veneration of serpents, 
and the power of the priests over serpents, gave a peculiar 
influence over the multitude to the artful priesthood of Osiris. 
It was, therefore, a noble and rational policy, worthy of the 
divine dignity, to discredit the false gods and the deceitful 
priesthood of the Egyptians, by showing how powerless they 
were in conflict with the true and living God. The method 
of this miracle was admirably adjusted to the purpose in 
view. The aim of Moses was to secure credit to the word 
of command which he brought from God to the Egyptian 
monarch; and it was germane to his purpose to overthrow 
the influence of the gods of Egypt over his mind. The speech 
of Balaam's ass is another stock instance of sceptical merri- 
ment. The use of the organs of an animal to convey intelli- 
gence from a spiritual being unembodied to another intelli- 
gent spirit in a body, and confined to bodily organs as the 
means of his communications with other beings, is certainly 
not irrational in itself, provided it is practicable. That it 
is practicable cannot be disproved; and why a thing not 
obviously irrational, and not capable of being proved to be 
impracticable, should be construed as an obvious subject for 
contempt, is not so easy to be accepted as an irresistible dic- 
tate of reason. If men can draw articulate speech from a 
parrot or a raven, it does not appear why the infinite power 
of God should not be able to draw it from the organs of an 
ass. If we knew all the circumstances surrounding these 
miracles of the scriptures which are supposed to be deficient 
in dignity, it is altogether probable that they would be quite 
as capable of vindication as the miracle of Moses in the palace 
of the Pharaoh. In an age not far removed from barbarism, 
21 



322 MlEACLE. 

especially among a people among whose scanty virtues a pro- 
found reverence for old age existed, there may have been a 
peculiar degree of wickedness in the mockery of Elisha by 
the reckless boys of a Syrian camp, which would justify a 
judgment of God in the shape of wild beasts, or the spears 
of a hostile tribe. The axe raised from the water may have 
sustained a peculiar relation to the training of the school of 
young religious teachers which the old prophet was instruct- 
ing. The accidental touching of a dead body by the bones 
of a dead prophet may have sustained relations to some pre- 
vious teachings of the prophet, which would make a miracle 
through the unconscious agency of his bones important to the 
purposes of the divine government. Certainly, in the absence 
of any knowledge to the contrary, a candid and impartial 
spirit will be disposed to give these forms of miracle the 
benefit of a presumed sufficient reason. It may be that the 
analogy of God's works of providence, and of the mode of 
teaching he has adopted in his word, may be carried into his 
miraculous acts. In general, he speaks to be understood; 
occasionally he speaks with studied obscurity. His provi- 
dence is generally benevolent to sinful men; occasionally 
he does his strange work — vengeance. There can be no doubt 
that the general character of divine miracle is grave, elevated, 
and even sublime; occasionally he may exercise his sover- 
eignty of will in an action familiar and common. The pur- 
pose to test the temper in which men construe his ways is a 
ruling element in his administration; and he may design 
a test of candor and justice to himself in these forms of 
miracle. Even admitting the instances to be all that the 
sceptic construes them to be, they do not discredit the general 
character of gospel miracle for a dignity worthy of their 
author and their end. But properly and fully understood, 
they may sustain this character all through the series. Cer- 



Miracle. 323 

tainly the miracles of Moses in the court of Pharaoh do not 
belong to any class of miracle discredited by want of dignity, 
and all the rest of the series attacked on this ground are 
capable of vindication, if all the surrounding circumstances 
were fully known. 

11. The eleventh test of genuine miracle is the infrequency 
of their occurrence, combined with the wealth and varied 
dignity of the acts when they do occur. The miracle of the 
calendar is graduated on a principle just the reverse — on the 
assertion of a perpetual system of miracle, coexistent with 
the life and progress of the church, and alleged to be neces- 
sary to both. As already illustrated, this species of so-called 
miracle is distinguished by lowness of conception, and, as 
such, fairly within the ability of the church to furnish to 
order as exigency may demand. This supposed necessity for 
perpetual miracle is discredited by the actual effects of the 
system ; instead of confirming faith, it breeds infidelity 
among all considerate people. This result is legitimate. The 
theory reflects dishonor upon the previous provisions of 
Almighty God to secure the rational confidence of his crea- 
tures, by implying their insufficiency. It reflects upon his 
moral and providential administration — on the one for pro- 
viding superfluous proof, in deference to unreasonable unbe- 
lief ; on the other, as allowing perpetual interruption of his 
regular system of administration through natural law. The 
miracle of the gospel, while making an ample display of 
power during an epoch of miraculous intervention, does not 
permit such an epoch to appear, except at rare and occasional 
periods of great importance. It appears only when some 
revelation of truth of infinite importance to an immortal 
race of sinful creatures is to be made. As the providential 
ruler of the universe, God guides his administration by a 
general system of natural laws. These laws are the effects 



324 Miracle. 

and expression of his will ; they declare it to he his will that 
effects should follow causes in a certain regular sequence, 
capable of being known and complied with by creatures of 
intelligence and will. To allow of a constant reversal of those 
laws would be equivalent to a contradiction of his will. To 
allow of a perpetual contradiction of his will in the stability 
of natural law would undermine the very ground on which 
a revelation of truth from him can be certified, for a regular 
system of disturbance would leave it uncertain whether a 
given so-called miraculous action was the result of the natural 
operation of law or an expression of the personal will of the 
Almighty. In other words, a perpetual system of miracle 
would destroy the value of miracle altogether. To allow 
of miraculous intervention at rare periods, for a great and 
vitally important moral purpose, involving the eternal inter- 
ests of an immortal race, may be allowable; human reason 
can see nothing unreasonable or incredible in such a con- 
ceivable emergency. But perpetual reverse of natural law 
at the discretion of human intelligence and will, is not only 
morally exceptionable, but is, logically considered, a contra- 
diction in itself, and involves it in the will and government 
of God. Such an imputation is altogether inadmissible ; and 
its logical sequence, from the theory of perpetual miracle, 
sweeps away the very foundation of that dangerous error. 
The notion is at war with every just conception of the divine 
government, physical and moral. 

12. The twelfth test is found in the character and work 
of the official witnesses. As before remarked, the claim of 
Christianity to the confidence of the world does not stand 
alone upon the testimony of the twelve apostles who were 
appointed to be the official witnesses to the life and teaching 
of Christ. Only a part of the twelve were concerned in the 
construction of the record. The apostles are the official wit- 



MlKACLE. 325 

nesses, but not the only witnesses. All Jewry were wit- 
nesses ; and the changes in the society of the clay are the 
demonstration of their testimony. But certain men were 
selected to proclaim the facts in the history and the doctrines 
in the system of the Great Teacher, to extend the legislation 
of God, and to organize the institutions established by the 
new revelation. The testimony of these men is threefold 
in character: first, in what they are; second, in what they 
said ; and third, in what they did. Their credibility is unim- 
peachable on all these grounds. They were men of sound 
minds; this is clear from their writings, which are full of 
surprising merits, considered as literary compositions. They 
were men of transparent candor and integrity, as evinced in 
their whole narrative of the facts, by their self-sacrifice, by 
their resolute confidence in their own statements, by their 
loss of all things for the testimony they bore. In plain and 
unlettered men of a low rank in society, ambition and the 
eclat of establishing a new religion w T ould not overbalance 
the loss of all things which such men would be likely to value. 
Conscious impostors, in founding a new religion, always pro- 
vide for securing their personal interests in this world, and 
a sure part in the promise of the future. These men encoun- 
tered the loss of all things in this world ; and the lofty system 
they taught condemned all liars, and themselves, if they lied, 
to endless wretchedness in the future which they proclaimed. 
They gained poverty, persecution, imprisonment, the scourge 
and vengeance of the established faiths which they sought to 
overthrow, endless wanderings over sea and land, and finally 
death itself ; yet they never flinched from testifying the facts 
and doctrines of the gospel. A refined and intense ambition 
might tempt a single intense and resolute intellect- to hazard 
much to establish a new religion, in the success of which he 
might indemnify himself for the risks and sufferings incident 



326 Miracle. 

to the attempt. But it is wholly incredible that twelve plain 
men, giving no one of them any indication of any peculiar 
ambition, should sacrifice home, friends, ease and safety, 
for danger, suffering, incessant labor, and death itself, in 
order to propagate a lie, of which they were the conscious 
authors. They did evidently believe themselves, with intense 
conviction, what they taught others to believe. That they 
were not deceived is resistlessly clear from their appeals to 
the knowledge of the facts by the Jewish people, to whom 
they first went with their message. Those people did not 
question the facts ; but their leaders hated the doctrine based 
upon the facts, and hence the violent resistance which was 
developed on one side, while the adhesion of thousands testi- 
fied to the truth of the gospel claim. No self-deception on 
the part of the official witnesses could have given them any 
hold on a people acquainted with the facts in the case. If 
ever witnesses were worthy of confidence, the official witnesses 
of the facts and doctrines of the gospel are amply entitled 
to belief. But independent of their personal claims to con- 
fidence, the work they did is overwhelming in its proof of 
the truth of their statements. These men delineated a char- 
acter so unique, so simple, so grand, so beautiful, that on any 
supposition except that they simply described what they saw 
and heard a living person do and say, is as great a miracle 
as any they relate. The delineation of the Christ of the 
gospels was impossible unless it was true. The fishermen 
of Galilee could not have drawn it out of their own concep- 
tions of a possible Christ. It was as impossible as the sup- 
position that a dozen small negroes, whose only instruction in 
art had been sketches in charcoal on a cellar door, painted 
the Transfiguration of Raphael, or that the rough carpenters 
of a Virginian plantation had builded the dome of St. Peter's. 
The notion is preposterous. The only possibility of the 



MlEACLE. 327 

achievement lay in one thing only: the rude peasants of 
Judea told what they had seen and heard ; and the wonderful 
portrait they drew was drawn from a living being, and not 
from iheir own conceptions of the grand and the beautiful 
in human character. Yet the character of the Christ of the 
gospels is as real a work of literary art as the character 
of Hamlet or Othello. The sceptic is as much bound to 
account for it as any other man. Add to this the other work 
of these men — the purest and loftiest system of morality, the 
grandest theory of the universe, the most profound and 
original system of doctrine, and the founding of the most 
remarkable institution in human history, the reorganized 
church of the living God — all these are the work of the Gal- 
ilean fisherman ! How can it be explained ? On the sceptical 
theory its causation is wrapped in impenetrable darkness; 
on the Christian theory all is plain. On the sceptical theory, 
the fishermen did it out of their own genius ; on the Christian 
theory, they did it under the inspiration of God. On the 
Christian theory, the cause is adequate to the effect; on the 
sceptical theory, the cause is so utterly inadequate it discloses 
a naked and absolute impossibility. Yet, more than this 
demonstration, these witnesses, as commissioned to enlarge 
the revelation from God, did themselves work miracles ; God 
himself bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, 
and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost. This 
fact is not only affirmed in the New Testament records, but 
is supported by the testimony of the Jewish writers and by 
the Talmud. If true, the fact draws an ineffaceable line of 
distinction between the miracle of the gospels and the miracle 
of the calendar. Where can the latter find such a corrobora- 
tion as miracle wrought by their witnesses ? 

13. The last evidence and test of the miracle of the gospel 
which we shall mention, by which it is honorably distin- 
guished from the miracle of the calendar, is the testimony 



328 Miracle. 

and assent of the enemies of the Christian system. For 
seventeen centuries these facts were not questioned, even by 
the infidels of the day. Celsus and Prophyry, Hierocles and 
Julian, all admitted the facts and ascribed them to magic. 
Jewish writers join in the same testimony. Josephus, in a 
passage so clear that no refuge is left to the sceptics except 
an attack on the genuineness of the writing, says, "Now there 
was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call 
him a man; for he performed many wonderful works. He 
was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. 
He drew over to him many of the Jews, and also many of 
the Gentiles. This was the Christ. And when Pilate, at 
the instigation of the principal men among us, had con- 
demned him to the cross, those who had loved him from the 
first did not cease to adhere to him. For he appeared to them 
alive again, on the third clay, the divine prophets having fore- 
told these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning 
him. And the tribe or sect of Christians, so named from him, 
subsists to this time." The Talmud, which is a collection of 
old Jewish traditional doctrines, first committed to writing 
about the middle of the second century of the Christian era, 
probably not more than fifty years after the death of the Apos- 
tle John, amid many hostile sentiments toward the Christian 
system, openly acknowledge that Christ did many wonderful 
works. They ascribe them to his having acquired the right 
pronunciation of the Shemmaphoresh, or the ineffable name 
of God, which they say he clandestinely stole out of the tem- 
ple. They also ascribe them in part to the arts of magic 
which he learned in Egypt. The Talmud also gives instances 
of miracle wrought by the apostles. Another remarkable 
testimony is to be found in the proconsular reports of Pon- 
tius Pilate to the imperial government at Rome. It was the 
custom of the imperial administration to require regular 
reports from all the provinces of the empire; and in this 



MlBACLE. 329 

w r ay all the notable occurrences in the distant parts of the 
empire were laid np in the archives of the government. 
Under this rule, it might have been expected that Pilate 
would transmit an account of the marvellous transactions in 
Judea during his administration. These reports from the 
provinces were called acta ; and while no more intended for 
general circulation than any other official papers, they were 
accessible to scholars and inquirers, and furnished material 
for the historian. That Pilate did send such reports to the 
Homan government is clear from a single fact, and that is, 
that for more than two centuries the early Christian apologists 
appealed incessantly to the Acta Pilati in the public archives 
as confirmatory of the teachings of the church. Even in their 
public documents, petitioning for mercy, addressed to the 
Emperor and the Senate, they appeal confidently to this docu- 
mentary evidence in the national archives. Thus Justin 
Martyr, in an address to Antoninus Pius, about A. D. 140, 
follows his narrative of the crucifixion, by this bold appeal, 
'"And that these things were so done, you may know from 
the acts made in the time of Pontius Pilate." After relating 
some of the miracles of Christ, he appeals to the archive 
documents again, as containing the same statement. Ter- 
tnllian, about the year 200 A. D., after speaking of the 
crucifixion, the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension 
into heaven, adds this statement, "Of all these things relating 
to Christ, Pilate himself, in his conscience already a Chris- 
tian, sent an account to Tiberius, then Emperor." The fact 
that Pilate did report the facts in the career of Jesus to Rome, 
is not only proved by the fact that for many years the Chris- 
tians, even in their direct appeals to the Poman government, 
made the Acta Pilati a perpetual reference, but also by the 
unquestionable historical fact that the Emperor, Tiberius, 
very early — about A. J). 52, within nineteen or twenty years 
from the death of Christ — formally proposed to the Roman 



330 Miracle. 

Senate to decree Christ among the gods of Rome. On what 
information did he proceed ? If we suppose the official report 
of the Procurator of Judea was in the hands of the Emperor, 
it is easier to account for the Emperor's proposal to the Senate 
than to suppose that he proceeded merely on the general 
rumor of the events in the Judean province, though without 
doubt the bruit of the wonderful story was widespread. The 
same Tertullian goes on to say, "There was an ancient decree 
that no one should be received for a deity unless he was first 
approved by the Senate. Tiberius, in whose time the Chris- 
tian name had its rise, having received from Palestine, in 
Syria, an account of such things as manifested the truth of 
his divinity, proposed to the Senate that he should be enrolled 
among the Roman gods, and gave his own prerogative vote 
in favor of the motion. But the Senate rejected it, because 
the Emperor himself had declined the same honor." There 
can be no doubt that the Acta Pilati were for many years in 
the archives of Rome, and were perpetually appealed to by 
the Christian apologists to deprecate the persecuting fury of 
the government. Those official reports of Pilate confirm the 
narratives of the New Testament, and probably led to the 
proposal of the Emperor Tiberius just discussed. It is also 
known that the Emperor Alexander Severus kept the image 
of Christ in the chapel of the palace, and was only restrained 
from erecting a temple in his honor by the oracles, which 
foretold that if this was done all other temples would bo 
forsaken. 

The early outspoken infidel and pagan enemies of Chris- 
tianity, Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, and the Emperor Julian 
the Apostate, never pretended to question the miracle of the 
gospel history. Celsus openly admits the facts, and ascribes 
them to the magic arts which Christ learned in Egypt. 
Julian says, "Jesus did nothing worthy of fame, unless any 
one can suppose that curing the lame and blind, and exorcising 



Miracle. 331 

demons in the villages of Bethsaida, are some of the greatest 
works." He acknowledges that Jesus had a sovereign power 
over impure spirits; that he walked on the surface of the 
deep and expelled demons. He acknowledges the facts, but 
endeavors to depreciate them. Strauss and Renan admit a 
basis of fact, but endeavor to explain away all that is miracu- 
lous in them. The transfiguration was only the beams of the 
new-risen sun shining upon the eyes of witnesses suddenly 
roused from sleep — a purely natural phenomenal mistaken 
for a supernatural transformation. To all such canvassing 
of the facts the plain Anglo-Saxon intellect refuses to consent. 
The facts are true as they are related to be, or we have no 
reliable evidence to the real nature of the occurrences, or 
even that anything at all occurred. Witnesses who are de- 
ceived, or who lie about matters of fact, are not to be believed 
at all. If they are reliable at all, they are reliable in all 
they say. 

These are the proofs of the Christian miracle, which not 
only establish the wondrous history of the apostolic era, but 
render it forever impossible for any really well-informed and 
judicially impartial understanding to confound them with the 
miracle of the calendar, which are the fulfilment of prophecy 
touching the "lying wonders of the man of sin." Let us 
heed the wondrous display of the finger of God ; let us deal 
with the glorious history as for our lives. God would not 
thus visibly thrust his hand into the order of nature unless 
for a purpose of incomparable importance. We shall not 
err in putting our confidence in the Man of Nazareth, the 
most glorious figure in all the galleries of time, the one 
incomparable image of perfect virtue, the greatest in power, 
the most perfect in wisdom, the most beautiful in moral 
excellence, the theme of prophecy from the dawn of human 
life on the earth, the most commanding figure in the future 
destinies of the human race. It is as safe to rely on the 



332 Miracle. 

integrity of Jesus as on the genius of Shakespeare or the 
patriotism of Washington, considering the founder of Chris- 
tianity even as nothing but a man. Considering him as the 
worker of miracle on a scale of incomparable splendor, it is a 
species of madness to distrust such power or to refuse to rely 
on such integrity and such infinite benevolence. He has been 
approved of God by signs and wonders and divers miracles 
and gifts of the Holy Ghost, and deserves to be approved by 
the living trust of all the race for whom his wonderful works 
were done. 

The phenomena of mesmerism and spiritualism must be 
very briefly discussed and dismissed. The first does not pre- 
tend to be anything more than the energy of an unknown 
principle in the wonderful constitution of the human body. 
It has, therefore, no legitimate place in the discussion of the 
signs and proofs of the divine will and power. As to spiritual- 
ism, admitting its fundamental principle — that is, that its 
phenomena are due to the agency of disembodied human 
spirits; or, conceding what is not easy of disproof, on the 
spiritualist's own standpoint, that they are due to the agency 
of spirits other than human, it is irresistibly clear that men 
cannot take their testimony touching the future life, because 
it is divided. Some testify one thing, some another. The 
spiritualist admits that as human spirits lie here, they may 
lie, and do lie, in the other scene of existence; and we are 
consequently compelled to try their declarations, and sepa- 
rate the true from the false. The trouble in doing this is, that 
apart from the guidance of God's Word, and on the plane 
of nature to which spiritualism relegates us, we have no 
means of knowing which of two conflicting statements is true 
and which is false. So far as our means of judging is con- 
cerned, both may be unreliable. Our safety is to stand firm 
on the Word of God, and by it try the spirits, whether they be 
of God or not. 



THE SUPERNATURAL AND THE 
NATURAL. 

FIRST SERMON. 

"Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep 
all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." — ■- 
2 Petee iii. 4. 

IT will be no unfitting sequel to the discussion of miracle 
to consider the supernatural under its wide and perma- 
nent relations to the natural system. It is not easy to define 
the distinction between the natural and the supernatural. 
There is a class of thinkers who aim to exclude the super- 
natural from the universe altogether ; nothing is real except 
what is visible to the senses and regulated by law. They 
make everything material, and refuse to allow the existence 
of anything except matter, or what is grounded in matter. 
There is one sense in which the natural and the supernatural 
may be said to merge into the unity of a common basis, that 
of existence; and as the materialist is bound by the funda- 
mental principle of his system of thought to admit whatever 
exists, the proof of a God, and of scenes of actual being other 
and apart from the visible universe which he now excludes 
as supernatural, would compel recognition at his hands, and 
probably would be construed by him as simply an extension 
of the realm of nature. This would be very inconvenient 
to him; for it is the chief desire of his heart, and the object 
of all his laborious attempts, to limit the sphere of real being 
to what is material. He would hardly accept it as consola- 



334 The Supernatural and the Natural. 

tory, to grant him his definition of nature, and then proceed 
to trouble him with a demonstration of a scene of existence, a 
whole scale of real being, embracing a deity, angels, and a 
sphere of existence suitable to their existence, but wholly dis- 
tinct from the materialist's chosen and his only acknowledged 
sphere of nature. These spiritual existences, by the force of 
their real being, may compel him to admit a supernatural 
as distinguished from the natural, or to extend the sphere of 
the natural and make it coextensive with the sphere of real 
being, neither of which will be agreeable. With this warning 
that by accepting the materialist's definition of nature we 
do net make it synonymous with real being, we consent to the 
definition of nature as confined to the visible and material 
universe and the forces apparently inhering in it, and the 
laws which regulate those forces. But let it be noticed that 
we accept this material universe, with all that is in it — crea- 
tures, signs, indications of variety of force, hieroglyphics 
of intelligence, its symptoms of design — in short, of all that 
is in it. The issue raised is whether this visible universe, 
thus recognized as nature, is all that there is; or whether 
there is not a sphere of being distinct from this nature, which 
may be distinguished by the name supernatural. It has been 
the doctrine, not only of all Christian theories, but of every 
form of what is called natural religion, that such a distinction 
as that between the natural and the supernatural does, and 
must, exist. The Christian theorist not only admits the dis- 
tinction, but defines and asserts a relation between them which 
he variously grades as creation, miracle, providence, and a 
general coordinate scene of spiritual existences coexisting 
along with this scene of nature. Creation is the origin of the 
system of nature in the will and power of the supernatural — 
in a power above nature. Miracle is the energy of the super- 
natural in its divine form, under an occasional and peculiar 



The Supernatural and the Natural. 335 

manifestation, in which the divine energy is displayed under 
such conditions as to disclose the presence and will of the 
Deity immediately. Providence is the perpetual support and 
guidance of the system he has created by his power, veiled 
from the open vision of his intelligent creature by the laws 
which he has established. Both are manifestations of the 
divine supernatural; but they differ in the mode of mani- 
festation. Miracle is a result of will manifesting its energies 
in a mastery over law; providence is a manifestion of will 
more remotely signified through the agency of law. The 
supernatural is too frequently confined to the divine super- 
natural; but it also embraces beings, scenes and energies 
of life less than divine, and discriminated as a part of the 
universe, real and actually existing, but not subject to the 
same visible and sensitive conditions established in the present 
visible and material scene of existence. 

The discovery of modern science — that regulated action is 
the universal character of all visible things, has exerted an 
unfortunate influence in some of its bearings. It has made 
the impression upon many intelligent and candid minds, more 
familiar with science than other branches of human know- 
ledge, that nothing reigns but law; that there is no force 
except in law; and that there is an incompatibility between 
the recognized laws of the universe and the universal human 
conception of a divine administrative Providence. It is sup- 
posed to be essentially a contradiction to postulate a system 
of nature under a divine administration — the supernatural 
coincident with the natural. It is supposed that the natural — 
ex vi termini — supersedes the supernatural; and that, too, 
not merely to a certain extent, and for specified ends indi- 
cated by the natural system itself, but absolutely and alto- 
gether. It is supposed that the will of God (where God is 
allowed at all) expressed in law, is exclusive of the will 



336 The Supernatural and the Natural. 

of God as a person administering law. This total exclusion, 
of the supernatural excludes miracle as an occasional super- 
naturalism; it excludes providence as a perpetual super- 
naturalism; it excludes prayer as an instrumental agency 
of divine favor and human assistance; it excludes regen- 
eration and grace in all its manifestations. It logically un- 
settles the whole base of Christianity, and also of all natural 
religion whatever, for it excludes all intercourse between 
God and man This broad exclusion of the supernatural 
excludes it from the universe, as well as from Christianity, 
and logically extinguishes not only a providence, but a crea- 
tor. A being so completely cut off from the possibility of any 
intercourse with a system which he is supposed by some of 
his excluders to have brought into being, is really a super- 
fluous predication, and, in point of fact, he is generally de- 
prived of his existence, as well as of his government. All 
this serious and far-reaching disturbance of all the natural 
and instinctive convictions of the human race is bottomed 
upon the inflexibility of the laws of nature which are sup- 
posed to exclude all interposition of personal will ; and that, 
too, while the relation of personal will, and its ability to make 
the laws of nature the superserviceable ministers of personal 
will, are obtrusively pressed upon human conviction by the 
universal experience of 'every human being. 

Several theories touching the relation of the divine super- 
natural to the universe have established a position in the 
speculations of different schools of philosophy. 

1. Among the Greeks, the theory of Epicurus gained ground 
against the prevailing notions of the popular religious beliefs. 
This theory makes God a creator, who, having placed the 
machinery of the universe in motion, retired into the soli- 
tudes of his own divinity, and left it entirely to itself. 

2. The theory of the English freethinkers of the time- 



The Sttpernatueal and the Natueal. 337 

of the Stuart princes admits a general, but excludes a special, 
providence. 

3. The theory of pantheism confounds God with the uni- 
verse, extinguishes all other beings but God, and makes all 
things mere forms into which Deity has condensed himself 
by an evolutionary process continually in movement. 

4. The theory of the modern positivist school of scientific 
scepticism insists upon the order of nature, as excluding all 
interference or concurrent action of the Deity with the 
natural system, disallows as much of providence as the free- 
thinkers of the seventeenth century accepted, and substan- 
tially agrees with the old Greek system of Epicurus. The 
conclusion is the same — that is, the entire exclusion of deity 
from the system of nature. They only substitute for the 
power of God, a more definite system of laws than the old 
Greek sophist had conceived. Both enunciated the same con- 
ception of the universe as a finished machine, set in motion 
and left to itself. 

5. The Christian theory is that it is a system created by 
the will of God, regulated in its whole action and in all its 
energies by a grand system of laws, and at the same time 
upheld, directed, and controlled by the will of the Creator. 
There is some difference of view among Christian teachers 
upon the exact nature of the powers impressed upon the' 
natural system by the creative fiat. Some theologians, both 
Protestant and Romanist, Augustinians, followers of the Car- 
tesian philosophy, and some of the more rigid of the early 
Calvinistic reformers, affirmed that, inasmuch as matter is 
altogether passive, there is no real power whatever in natural 
physical cause. All physical power — the resistance of a 
stone when struck, for example — is due to the power of God 
acting immediately through matter, and not to the hardness 
of the stone itself. This scheme is untenable and of no great 

22 



338 The Supeenatueal and the Natueal. 

currency. The theory most generally accepted by Christian 
thinkers is that God has endowed matter with certain proper- 
ties which will act in uniform methods under given con- 
ditions, but only under these conditions. Change the con- 
ditions, and the same energies will work out a different result. 
iFire will melt lead; it will harden clay. The difference in 
the conditions of the metal and the earth will explain the 
difference in the effect of the same cause. Wood has a natural 
capacity of combustion ; fire has a natural capacity of burn- 
ing; but the energies of both will remain inert unless they 
are brought together ; they are conditioned upon contact. In 
the free combination of these conditions, the system of nature 
gives free scope for the activity of personal intelligence and 
will. This we know from an abundant human experience. 
The relation of personal intelligence and will to natural law 
is hereby discovered; it is as open to the divine will as to 
any other will; and the logical basis of the active interven- 
tion of divine Providence to any extent agreeable to the divine 
will, is too clearly disclosed to be rationally resisted. This 
is openly admitted by Professor Tyndall. He declares, "It 
is no departure from scientific method to place behind natural 
phenomena a universal Father, who, in answer to the prayers 
of his children, alters the currents of these phenomena. Thus 
far, theology and science go hand in hand." He then excepts 
to the verification of answers to prayer, as a matter of fact, 
alleging that a mere theoretic conception is a mere figment 
without verification. But this is an attempt to escape from 
the logical force of his own admission by raising another and 
a different question. Certainly the possibility of a fact is 
one thing, and its actual occurrence is another. The verifica- 
tion of an alleged occurrence may be legitimately sought on 
its own evidence. But, in admitting the logical possibility 
of a divine intervention in answer to prayer, there is a dis- 



The Supernatural and the Natural. 339 

tinct admission of the logical basis of the Christian doctrine. 
In recognizing the opening for the interposition of intelli- 
gence and will in the system of nature, the distinguished 
scientist enters a protest against the general impeachment 
of the possibility of such an interposition, drawn from the 
alleged stability of that system. He shows that that stability 
does not exclude all manifestation of personal will, and con- 
sequently it is legitimate to prove that possibility as one ques- 
tion, and the actual use of the possibility as another. We 
are discussing the question of possibility as against a denial 
of it, on the ground of the inflexibility of natural law. Dr. 
Tyndall admits it; and then diverges to the discussion of 
another question altogether — a question proper to be raised, 
but not in the debate of the question of possibility. It would 
be altogether legitimate for me to assert that a tree could 
grow on a given spot of ground, even if I could not show 
one actually growing there. A question of fact is distinct 
from a question of possibility; but the admission of the 
possibility of the fact removes all resistance to its occurrence, 
grounded on natural law. A question of power is distinct 
from a question of fact, and must be separately dealt with; 
each question must stand upon its own evidence. It will not 
do to confound them. A rough analogy of the Christian 
doctrine of Providence may be found in human machinery — 
not exact in all its parts, but sufficiently so to disclose the 
relation between the natural system and the agency, super- 
intendance, and personal will of God. Machinery of human 
construction is not only consistent with human management, 
but dependent upon it. The laws of cohesion and attraction, 
the laws of motion, the laws of lever, wheel and axle, are not 
interfered with or superseded by the human energies of the 
machinist or engineer; they are employed by them. Why, 
then, is it inconceivable that a divine intelligence should work 



340 The Supeenattjkal and the Natukal. 

out special results, not only without any disturbance of 
natural laws, but by means of them ? This is the Christian 
doctrine of Providence — his most holy, wise, and powerful 
preserving and governing all his creation and all its activi- 
ties — employing its laws to work out special designs of his 
will, just as his human creatures do. 

On one side the doctrine of the scriptures is substantially 
identical with the doctrine of science. Both predicate the 
reign of law over all the universe. According to one, law 
reigns; according to the other, God reigns through law. 
Neither attempt to explain what these laws are in their 
essence. The nature of the force in the laws of nature is 
left inscrutable by both. The method in which this force 
works when disclosed by its manifestations is called by 
science a law of nature ; but it knows nothing of the nature 
of this law ; it is merely an unknown force under methodical 
regulation. This should never be forgotten in the perpetual 
reference to law in nature, that it is merely the observed 
method — the formulated conditions and limits of manifested 
force in an energy whose actual nature is as inscrutable as 
the supernatural possibly can be. May it not be allowable 
to suggest, that in a discussion looking to a result so serious 
as the exclusion of Deity from all practical connection with 
the universe — a result fraught with inconceivable changes 
in human affairs — there should be some removal of the 
obscurity which rests upon the nature of those laws which 
are supposed to exclude him ? If the nature of the force in 
natural law is absolutely inscrutable, who has any right to 
dogmatize about it? Who has any right to deny it to be 
one thing or to assert it to be another? Why may it not 
be a manifestation of the supernatural more or less direct? 
In the face of such a truth as the absolutely inscrutable nature 
of the force in natural law, no dogmatism is allowable ; and 



The Supeenatueae and the Eatueal. 341 

the believer in the supernatural can claim consideration for 
his theory, that it affords at least a competent explanation 
of an unaccountable thing, if not the true one; and he can 
properly remand his theory to proof upon its own evidences. 
The object of this discussion is simple and direct. It is 
not to discuss the doctrine of Providence in its content and 
limits ; but simply to meet the objection that the supernatural 
is excluded by the natural, and to disclose the logical basis 
in the system of nature for the intervention of God as the 
hearer of prayer, and a practical refuge of his trusting chil- 
dren. Our aim shall be to show, if possible, that there is a 
supernatural which exists coincident with the natural, and 
is both connected and correlated with it. If either of these 
predications, and especially the latter, can be shown, the truth 
of the Christian doctrine of Providence, and the falsity of 
all theories which exclude him from the government of his 
own dominions, will be established. If an actual correlation 
like that between parent and child can be shown, the one 
side of the correlation will demonstrate the other. If we can 
prove the supernatural to any extent, it may be logically 
admitted to any extent within the limits of possibility. If 
creation can be proved, the supernatural is proved; and its 
variously graded manifestations, as divine or subordinate 
supernatural — creation, providence, miracle, message, vision, 
dream, deliverance or destruction in the earthly sphere, regen- 
eration and grace — all become logically possible, and may 
be remanded to proof as fact whenever any case of either is 
alleged to have occurred. If creation can be proved, miracle 
can be proved, for creation is miracle ; if miracle is proved, 
Providence can be proved, and any manifestation of the super- 
natural becomes intrinsically credible. The supernatural 
demonstrated in the universe anywhere closes all questions 
as to its possible manifestations. 



342 The Supernatubal and the Natural. 

1. The first argument bearing on the relation between the 
natural and the supernatural which proves that the one cannot 
exclude the other, is that on any theory from creation by the 
sovereign fiat of God down to atheism itself, the natural is 
the fruit of the supernatural; and if so, cannot possibly 
exclude it. The human mind revolts against the dogma that 
something can come out of nothing; the intuition of cause 
and effect is imperative in the human understanding. This 
assertion is not which is the bringing of something into exist- 
ence by the will and power of omnipotence; it presupposes 
the existence of first cause, which, as first cause, is itself 
uncaused. In this theory the intuition of cause and effect 
is fully met. With the compulsory exception of first cause, 
wherever the human mind sees a result it intuitively perceives 
it as the result of some cause. The visible universe presses 
upon the sense of every living thing. In forms vast, living, 
beautiful and sublime, earth with its contents, and the sky 
with its planetary splendors, obtrude upon our vision. Whence 
are they, as Napoleon asked of his atheist officers ? They 
cannot be self-derived, for their adjustments are too perfect 
to exclude all ideas of intelligence and indescribable power; 
and matter, no matter how grand in its forms, is incapable 
of intelligence and will. To this question of origin, the 
answer of all human kind is that they come from an origi- 
nating force commonly called God, which works under mani- 
festations which are variously construed. The predication 
of this force back of the phenomena is compulsory, and the 
nature of it obtrudes itself upon the inquiring intellect. 
Various theories have been proposed in explanation. Take 
the theory of the pantheist : he tells us nature is the develop- 
ment of Deity; the wild, blind God of the infinite is con- 
densing himself; and the natural is the fruit of the super- 
natural. On any theistic scheme the supernatural is affirmed ; 



The Supernatural and the Natural. 343 

and even on the conception of a non-creating and a mere 
formative God, working on material existing from eternity, 
still the natural in its actual forms is the fruit of the super- 
natural. But go one step further: deny all deity, and even 
on atheistic principles the universe is to he accounted for, 
and that, too, with a competent consideration of all its excel- 
lencies of force, variety, adjustment, size and multitude, 
beauty and grandeur, laws and utilities. The marvellous 
scene must he the result of some marvellous force ; and if you 
refuse it the name of God, still it is something that exists; 
and it is something as wonderful as its effects, and distinct 
from its effects. It is substantially the supernatural, and the 
natural is its effect. But all the instincts of the human 
understanding refuse the doctrine of the eternity of matter — 
of two independent first causes, one of them inert, unintelli- 
gent, incapable of self -movement or design; they demand 
a creator as the cause of all things, himself necessarily un- 
caused — a living Deity — and the supernatural, inextinguish- 
able on any theory of nature, stands invincibly revealed in 
his person. Given a Creator, and the natural is not only seen 
to be the fruit of his power — which is the doctrine of crea- 
tion — but the conception of the supernatural excluded from 
his own domains by the perfection of his own work — which 
is the doctrine of Providence — becomes an obvious solecism 
in thought. Creation, as the result of will, must logically 
remain subject to will, and providence is a necessary cor- 
rollary of creation. Omnipotence cannot exhaust itself by 
any exertion of its energies. 

2. In the second place, the doctrine of Providence is an 
irresistible logical necessity from the character of God — from 
the conception of a perfect necessary being. Pirst cause 
exists necessarily; the predication of it is compulsory; it 
is a necessary postulate in thought, as well as in the physical 



344 The Supernatural and the Natural. 

universe. A being of necessary existence must be every- 
where — an omnipresent existence. Necessity is determining 
in its force. What cannot but be, cannot be in one place more 
than in another. What cannot but be, must be; what must 
be in this naked and unqualified sense of absolute necessity, 
cannot be conceived as excluded from any point. Now, given 
God's omnipresence, the datum carries all his perfections to 
every place. He must be in every part of the universe, in all 
the realms of space, intelligent, all-powerful, ever active, a 
complete God. To exclude such a being altogether from 
the universe ; to shut him out from the natural system which 
he made for his own ends and purposes; to exclude him 
from the exact knowledge of all events which necessarily 
occur in his presence; to exclude him from the direction 
and control of these events and the forces of nature, if he 
should choose to assume it, is absurdity gone moon-struck; 
it is the very wrath and fury of folly. The personal per- 
fection of God determines his providence. The exertion of 
his creative power determines his providence, as a corrollary 
necessary to the ends and purposes of creation. 

3. The third proof that the natural does not exclude the 
supernatural is drawn from the allied, yet distinct, facts that 
both are connected in one line of succession, and definitely 
correlated to each other in another line of facts in the uni- 
verse. As illustrative of the first of these suggestions, take 
that unquestionable and most bitter mystery — death. What 
is it? It is one of two things; it is either annihilation or 
transfer of being. If it annihilates the individual, it does 
not destroy the dreadful mysterious mill in which the genera- 
tions of mankind are ground up; its tremendous machinery 
grinds on, and hints fearfully of some malignant super- 
natural, the mill-owner and taker of the toll. But that con- 
ception of death — annihilation — cannot stand against the 
lights which stream, like the meteors of the frozen north, 



The Supeknatural and the IsTatttkal. 345 

from all nature, in which nothing is annihilated, and from the 
constitution of the human soul, which asserts its account- 
ability. Analogy, reason, conscience, and the broad laws of a 
patent moral administration in this planet — all protest 
against such a construction of death. 

But suppose death is a transfer of being. As such, it may 
exist in two forms ; but in both, death is only the unfolding 
of the connection between the natural and the supernatural; 
the natural merging through its advancing stages into the 
supernatural. 

If it is transfer, it may be such on pantheistic or on Chris- 
tian principles. If it be on the former, it may take place 
according to the view of a German philosopher, who exulted 
with the most hideous glee that ever fell from human lips at 
the prospect of laying down an existence which had become 
-a curse to him, and in having his consciousness forever buried 
in the evolution into deity. Still, even on this theory, the 
natural must pass over into the supernatural. Or we may 
take a more joyous pantheistic view; and, according to the 
theory of that most brilliant of American poets, most subtle 
of American analysts — Edgar Allan Poe — that personal con- 
sciousness will not be extinguished by the evolution into deity, 
and that the time will come when we shall awake to the con- 
sciousness that our consciousness is the consciousness of 
Jehovah. Still, on this theory, too, the natural emerges into 
the supernatural, and throws a flood of strange, brilliant light 
on the connection between them. 

But, now, make a supposition more accordant with the 
moral intuitions of the mind and with the teachings of the 
scriptures. Let us suppose that death is a transfer on the 
Christian principles, and that the personality of man passes 
over unimpaired into the future state. Still the same unim- 
paired and indestructible relation between the natural and 
the supernatural emerges to view. Suppose an unveiled angel 



346 The Supernatural and the Natural. 

should stand revealed before us now, would not he be taken 
as a positive revelation of the subordinate supernatural? 
Assuredly. Now, suppose a human spirit which had passed 
through death should appear; would it not be considered 
equally a specimen of the supernatural % Assuredly ; yet at 
the same time it would also be a specimen of the natural; 
it would be a born denizen of the earth ; but it would be more. 
It would be a demonstration of the connection between the 
natural and the supernatural, and show how we ourselves, 
a part of the natural, will emerge into the supernatural. Given 
the doctrine of the soul's immortality, and in our own persons 
we are demonstrations of the inextinguishable connection be- 
tween the natural and the supernatural. The time will come 
in the history of every human being when we will be amazed 
at our own blindness on the subject of our relations to a 
future state. 

4. There is another line of facts which not merely connect, 
but positively correlate the natural directly with the super- 
natural, and, therefore, develop the inference with great 
increase of power. These facts are found in the mental and 
moral constitution of the human being. These facts are a 
part of the existing system of nature. It will not do for the 
student of this system to occupy himself exclusively with 
material phenomena. He has no right to ignore the char- 
acteristics of the human creature who forms a part of the 
system of nature, and which correlate him to that system. 
He has no right to avoid the study and the full recognition 
of those mental and moral facts which are discoverable in 
this creature, and which correlate him to something higher 
than mere physical or material connections. He must take 
all the facts of the human constitution — facts which, as facts, 
are as much a part of the system of nature as the human 
hands or feet. Man's constitution, mental and moral, deter- 
mines him as a being of intelligence, conscience and will, 



The Supernatural and the ^Natural. 347 

capable of mental and moral action. It determines him as 
a subject of moral law. It determines him as a responsible 
being. From these facts, the laws of thought point to the 
correlations of the facts. An accountable being, who is never 
to be brought to account, is a contradiction in terms. Con- 
science ever more points to the Law-giver; and the natural 
revealed in the constitution of the human creature is dis- 
closed in an indestructible correlation with the supernatural. 
To give this argument a little more breadth : if the natural 
was designed, and consequently adapted, to exclude the super- 
natural so completely as the scientific champions of an exclu- 
sive natural affirm, how is it possible to account for the uni- 
versal recognition of some sort of supernatural by every tribe 
and kindred of the human race ? How account for the power- 
ful and pervading moral and religious instincts of the human 
being ? If the real system had been designed to exclude the 
supernatural, every part of the system would have been har- 
moniously adjusted to that purpose. Man would have had 
no more thought or desire towards the supernatural than a 
beast. Cattle exhibit no solicitude for comfortable relations 
with a supernatural ; but man's soul is irresistibly determined 
towards these high thoughts ; they evermore wander through 
eternity. His religious instincts, though capable of being 
corrupted, misled and enfeebled by his own criminal moral 
action, are inextinguishable. His whole nature correlates 
him with the supernatural. But if there is no supernatural, 
his nature is a lie; the exquisite system of adjustments in 
nature is disrupted ; there is no adjustment whatever for tlie 
highest parts of the human nature. His being is so falsely 
contrived that he is determined by it to seek for a God who 
does not exist ; to pray, when an answer to prayer is a natural 
impossibility ; to feel a responsibility which is an utter delu- 
sion. Religious desire in any shape is as absurd a passion 
of the human soul as a perpetual yearning after wings would 



348 The Supernatural and the Natural. 

be — a species of insanity. There would be, of course, no 
guidance in life, no comfort in sorrow, no deliverance in dan- 
ger, no help in trouble ; in all life's emergencies, in the name- 
less horror of death, no refuge — and none wanted! If the 
system of nature was designed to exclude the supernatural, 
no desire and no conception of it would have ever entered 
the human soul. Man, with all the sorrowful conditions 
attached to his existence on earth, would have wandered 
through the vast deserted scene of a universe, aimless in its 
ends, unguided in its energies, — both the scene and its inhabi- 
tant a curse to themselves in their beast-like want of thought, 
and a riddle, full of tears and perplexity, to every intelligent 
knower of the facts. But the adjustments of nature are truly 
ordered; every passion and principle of human nature has 
its allotted adjustment under the moral conditions appointed 
for their regulation ; and the higher elements of that nature 
are no exception to the rule. The correlations of nature in 
man stand on a basis so firm that it is invincible logic to 
reason from one branch of the correlation to the other ; and 
if the inference is compulsory from the notion of parent to 
the notion of child, or from the notion of husband to the 
notion of wife, it is equally imperative from the actual con- 
stitution of nature in the human being to the supernatural, 
which dominates all nature wherever it is found in existence. 
Man's nature is not a lie; and it correlates inseparably the 
natural and the supernatural. Annihilate God, either by 
atheism, pantheism, or by a system of law excluding him 
from the universe, and you leave man an anomaly and a riddle 
out of all assignable relations to the profoundest and most 
powerful elements of his being, with no adjustments in the 
wide realms of nature which can account for his constitution 
or minister to his well-being, with no possibilities of use or 
employment, utility or happiness from the noblest and the 
most commanding parts of his being. 



THE SUPERNATURAL AND THE 
NATURAL. 

SECOND SERMON. 
"Having no hope, and without God in the world." — Ephesians ii. 12. 

5., A MOTHER proof that the natural system does not 
jLA exclude the supernatural is that without the con- 
tinued presence and energy of a powerful presiding intelli- 
gence there can he no guarantee of permanent energy and 
right action in the natural system. It is not available to 
appeal to the actual appearance of steadiness and uniformity 
in nature as proving a reliable self-sustaining force in the 
material universe, without first proving, on distinct and inde- 
pendent grounds, the non-existence of a supporting Provi- 
dence, separate from the system, because the steadiness and 
uniformity of nature may possibly be the result of such a 
support, and not of an independent force in the system itself. 
The one explanation must be excluded before the other can 
be accepted as certain. It will not do to say that the original 
arrangements of the originating power, whatever it may be, 
was so perfect as to exclude all need of a subsequent interfer- 
ence. Two considerations bar this inference. It is barred 
by the historical development of our own world and that of 
the starry universe around us. Science tells us that the 
record of our own planet is a record of successive catastrophes, 
involving all life then existing in absolute destruction. Stars 
are discovered burning up on the far distant skirts of the 
universe. Change reigns in every direction, and change run- 



350 The Supernatural and the Natural. 

ning into ruin as far as can be known. Now, dismiss alto- 
gether the idea of a governing intelligence, and where is the 
guarantee of stability anywhere % Who can predict the results 
of blind and unguided force ? It may be constructive, as we 
know it sometimes is ; but it may be destructive, as we also 
know it is; no sure calculation can be made upon it. Now, 
conceive a God, competent to manage the amazing scene, but 
absolutely withdrawn from all control or support of the ener- 
gies set in motion by the original act of creation. The result 
is the same. The notion of the original impulse being a guar- 
antee of continued orderly energy, is impeached by the con- 
vulsions and the absolute destruction apparent in many quar- 
ters of the marvellous scene. No one can safely appeal to 
the perfection of the original arrangement made by the 
Creator as excluding all necessity for subsequent manifesta- 
tions on his part, as long as such facts belong to the history 
of the universe. The apparent law of progress or development 
also vitiates the inference; it impeaches the premise of per- 
fection in the original arrangement, and discredits the con- 
clusion. 

But there is another distinct consideration which illus- 
trates the impossibility of construing the system of nature as 
standing on its own inherent force, and no longer dependent 
upon the will of its Creator. Creation logically carries provi- 
dence. If the original energies of nature were impressed 
by the will of the Creator, the whole character of those 
energies is the result and manifestation of will — their dura- 
tion as well as every other characteristic. They are sustained 
by that will for the whole period of their action, because 
the original grant and the whole scope of those energies was 
a result of will. The operation of will is seen throughout 
the whole mass, and the whole operation of those granted 
powers. It may be but one grand act of sovereign will, but 



The Supernatural and the Natural. 351 

it energizes forever ; and the whole progress of all the forces 
brought into play by that will is a continuous expression of 
that will. The steady and permanent energy of the impulse 
is as much the result of will, and as much a manifestation 
of will, as its original endowment. To conceive of the sup- 
port of that will as withdrawn or suspended is a contradic- 
tion; it is to conceive of a will to secure permanent energy, 
yet a will withdrawn after a limited progress has been made 
and no permanence has been realized, which is absurd and 
contradictory. To conceive of a will to secure permanent 
activity, yet willed at the same time to yield non-permanence, 
is a positive contradiction; it is to conceive of an energy, in 
its very nature dependent on will, made independent of will — 
which is absurd — a quasi deification of an energy absolutely 
dependent. A force in itself absolutely dependent, conceived 
as made positively independent, is an assertion which is about 
as near a contradiction in terms as can well be conceived. 
The continued support of the natural system is a necessary 
result of creation; being the result of will, its whole career 
is expressive of will at every stage of its movement. The 
whole difficulty springs from confounding the mode of the 
divine volition with the mode of human volition. All man's 
schemes are the determinations of repeated acts of will ; the 
will of an infinite being is but one grand fiat, infinitely com- 
prehensive, which energizes forever. The whole energy of 
the divine mind is one eternal act — successive in its mani- 
festations, but not in itself. All his purposes are embraced 
in one energy of will, which is the source of the continued, 
as well as of the original, energy of the forces of nature. 
This does by no means confound the forces of nature with 
either the being or the will of God; but it does leave those 
forces dependent upon his will — entirely under his control — 
and demonstrates the doctrine of the divine Providence. 



352 The Supernatural and the Naturae. 

Furthermore, so far as the human understanding can see, 
all material energies are self -consuming ; and not only self- 
consuming, but are wholly devoid of intelligence; they are 
not capable of self-support; they are blind forces, incapable 
of comprehending their own decay, or the modes of redinte- 
gration. It is incompetent to appeal to the restorative pro- 
cesses of nature as demonstrating a self-sustaining force in 
the system, as against a supporting providence, until that 
providence is independently discredited, because the restora- 
tive forces of nature may be the effect of the action of that 
providence. The argument touching the restorative processes 
of nature is the same with the argument for the continuity of 
nature. Two forces may be conceived as concerned in those 
processes — their own energy, or the power of God; before 
one can be certainly affirmed, the other must be discredited. 
What we affirm is that, on the supposition of the entire with- 
drawal of intelligence and will from the ordering and main- 
tenance of material forces, there can be no assurance of the 
support of the system, no guaranteed adjustment of the resto- 
rative forces to repair waste and prevent destruction. Con- 
ceive of the superintendence of an infinite intelligence ener- 
gizing all through the system by its own infinite power, effec- 
tive during the whole period of its allotted existence; and 
this conception determines the continued existence and energy 
of nature, and removes all suspicion of its stability. But to 
conceive of the entire withdrawal of that sustaining intelli- 
gence and will, is not only a solecism in thought, but the 
destruction of all guarantee of stability in nature, and the 
ascription of self-sustaining power to a blind and unintelli- 
gent force, incapable of comprehending or supplying its own 
waste, or providing for its own support. Conceiving of a will 
underlying all the forces of nature, giving effect to the adjust- 
ments needful to supply waste and sustain the energies of the 



The Supeenatueae and the Nattjeae. 353 

system, this concept makes all plain, and the stability of 
nature passes beyond the region of donbt or fear. Withdraw 
that notion of a sustaining and guiding will, and all rational 
basis for the support of the mechanical system of nature is 
destroyed. 

A favorite theory of modern science is what is called the 
doctrine of evolution. Ix teaches that all the forms of nature 
are evolved out of a few simple substances, or perhaps one 
substance originally created, under the operation of regular 
laws of production, working through immense periods of 
time. It is held in atheistic connections by some ; by others 
it is held, not only as wholly consistent with the theory of 
creation, but as vindicating more powerfully than any other 
merely physical argument, the doctrine of a perpetual Provi- 
dence. The Saturday Review of April 29, 1876, says : "The 
fact is that the doctrine of evolution has not only made it 
incumbent on the upholders of miracles to reconsider their 
arguments ; it has also undermined the ordinary arguments 
of scepticism. The doctrine of evolution implies that the 
Creator of the universe is energetically present through all 
the operations of nature." For to quote again the writer of 
the article in the Church Quarterly, "According to evolution, 
nature has no permanent mechanical constitution, confining 
it within certain limits. It is rather conceived as a series 
of progressive events, or individuations in time. Now, if we 
consider that the series of events which make up the suc- 
cession of nature in time is, and must be, a history — that is, 
a contingent series — the impossibility of throwing back design 
under evolution is manifest." If we do not misapprehend 
these not very lucid words, the meaning is this: it institutes 
a comparison between the universe conceived as a machine, 
and conceived as a mass of self-moving forms of being. "If 

the universe were a machine, set a-going for a certain time, 
23 



354 The Supernatural and the Natural. 

the result of its movements would be constant and invari- 
able — effects following rigidly from constant mechanical 
causes. But evolution has to do with living forms, and these, 
according to that doctrine, are essentially variable. Granting 
that protoplasm is chemically the same in the germ cell of a 
man and of a fish, this only makes it all the more certain 
that a presiding mind directs and shapes the very different 
results. But if we admit that a supreme mind is behind the 
frame-work of nature, directing and controlling its forces, 
we shall recognize that a miracle is only an instance of the 
same control, charged with a more manifest purpose. The 
will of God acting on brute matter, and controlling its obedi- 
ence, is not different in kind from the will of man energizing 
through the material organism of the body; and the one is 
no more than the other a violation or suspension of physical 
law. If the process by which the loaves were multiplied, or 
Lazarus restored to life, were laid bare, a man of science 
would probably be able to analyze and explain it as easily 
as he now explains the processes which are now going on in 
the laboratory of nature." Whether the system of nature 
be strictly a machine in the strictest sense of the term, or a 
mass of self-moving forms, makes no difference to the absolut 
necessity for a presiding intelligence to work out the best 
and intelligent results. Both are without intelligence of their 
own; and the knowledge, judgment, and labor of a human 
workman is as needful to grow a crop of grain as to run a 
machine. The sphere of intelligence and will is as clearly 
defined in the case of a mass of living forms as in the case 
of a machine. Under no conception of the universe can the 
conception of a supporting and guiding intelligence be ration- 
ally dispensed with. Miracle is the result of the personal 
will of God, disclosing a manifest purpose immediately, 
through a mastery over law which is only rationally attributa- 



The Supernatural and the Natural. 355 

ble to divine power; and this signature is equally indis- 
pensable and equally clear, whether the divine will is exerted 
independently of all law, or whether it is exerted through a 
combination of law possible only to God. The immediate 
expression of the divine will is one thing; the mode of this 
expression is another. Providence is the same will of God, 
more remotely expressed in its ordinary administration 
through the agency of law. It is impossible to confound the 
two, or to discredit either. 

6. The Christian theory is in accord with all the known 
facts. It explains the religious instincts of the human soul 
by showing their correlations in the existence, claims, and 
character of an everywhere present and all-powerful moral 
intelligence and will. It explains the catastrophes of nature 
to be, not the ungoverned explosions of unintelligent natural 
forces, but as the chosen expedients of a perfect intelligence 
for development of a vast plan of administration, on unknown 
but guaranteed principles — principles incomprehensible by 
human wisdom in its present attainable stages of discovery 
and knowledge, but guaranteed by his character. It explains 
the laws of nature, not as original and self-derived energies, 
but as energies selected and impressed by the will of the 
Creator, and made to work in regular methods, and thus under 
the direction of intelligence and will to work out designed 
results. It explains the relation of God, as the administrator 
of the vast complex system: first, as sustaining its energies 
in unabated force; and second, in directing and controlling 
them in their relations to each other, and to any designed 
result, whether designed by divine or human intelligence and 
will. It affirms the stability of natural law as the impressed 
will of the Creator; and defines the relation of his intelli- 
gence and will to the system after its inauguration as analo- 
gous in kind, though infinitely more perfect in degree, to the 



356 The Supernatural and the Natural. 

relation of human intelligence and will to natural law. It 
teaches that since human intelligence and will can discover 
and combine the laws and conditions of nature in order to 
work out special designed results, the sphere of will in rela- 
tion to law is clearly disclosed, and that it is as competent 
to one species of intelligence as another, according to the 
degree of the intelligence; to divine as well as to human, 
and even to animal intelligence and will. It thus lays a 
rational and strictly scientific basis for prayer, for religious 
affections in the human heart, and for all acts of religious 
and moral obedience from man to God. It places supreme 
moral goodness and intelligence, as well as boundless power, 
at the head of all things. It gives the glorious assurance 
that evil is not master ; that the dreadful energies of moral 
and physical evil are under control, and are working out the 
purposes of infinite excellence. It shows, in the supreme 
practical providence of the Almighty God, the broad basis 
for the confidence and hope of the creature. The scripture 
doctrine and the actual administration of divine providence 
are not without their dark and mysterious elements. Clouds 
and darkness are about the throne — thick clouds and flashes 
of fire; — but the throne stands; and it gives the assurance 
that righteousness and judgment dwell with the King upon 
it, and will reign forever and ever. 

The single purpose of this discussion has been to indicate 
the basis upon which rests the claim of personal service which 
the Word of God exacts of men. It has been to bring God 
nigh unto us in all our multiplied necessities; to show the 
supernatural, divine and subordinate, in its relation to the 
natural ; and to vindicate the claim of the Eternal Father to 
the steadfast and affectionate obedience, the habitual trust, 
the real and heartfelt affections, and the use of the whole 
series of positive activities which are rightfully demanded, 



The Supernatural and the Natural. 357 

in order to secure the rights of the author and governor of 
the universe, and at the same time to secure the highest devel- 
opment and well-being of the intelligent and responsible crea- 
tures. What can there be in such a conception to raise fear 
or excite reluctance in any just understanding or in any guilt- 
less bosom ? It is only the presence and unlimited supremacy 
of supreme excellence which is affirmed in the doctrine of 
Providence. It ^s God, the Father of all mercies, who is 
brought nigh to needy man. If the human heart dreads or 
dislikes such a character, it can only be accounted for by a 
perverted condition of human feeling; by a conscious want 
of conformity to his laws, and a consequent want of sympathy 
with his glorious perfect nature. In itself this ever-living 
and supreme providence of God is a thing to create boundless 
joy. It not only assures us that perfect excellence is in perfect 
control, but, more especially consoling to human affections, 
that perfect excellence in every lovely and trustworthy moral 
quality, in an indissoluble combination with perfect power, 
is brought close to every human heart. The administrator 
of providence can see every circumstance ; he can hear every 
cry ; he can aid in every emergency ; he can save to the 
uttermost. He can judge with perfect knowledge; he can 
make every allowance and determine every element which 
may enhance or alleviate responsibility. He can do true jus- 
tice, as well as show mercy, to whom he will. All the pledges 
of the glorious gospel are thus made practicable, and as such 
commended to our confidence. Eegeneration and grace, in 
all its provisions and offers, are rendered credible as possi- 
bilities. The supernatural of the scriptures, in all its modi- 
fications as supreme or subordinate, gives to man all he needs 
of a religious refuge in every time of need. To turn from this 
gracious and profoundly moving doctrine of divine Provi- 
dence, is to despise our own sweetest mercies, to trample 



358 The Supernatural and the Naturae. 

upon our richest inheritance, and to forfeit in life, in sorrow,, 
and in our own transition into the unveiled supernatural, the 
only possible resource for comfort and hope. 

'But now let us turn to the logical and practical results of 
the opposite theory. The extinction of the supernatural in- 
volves the eternity of matter, an absurdity which makes a nec- 
essary and consequently unlimited being of a substance which 
never exists except under limits — in which form inheres a& 
one of its indispensable and native qualities. It consequently 
makes everything that exists material, and excludes all traces 
of intellectual and moral reality — which is absurd. It ex- 
cludes all room for intelligence and will in the natural sys- 
tem, all design in its formation, and all space for intelligence 
and will in the use and administration of the system; which 
is contradicted by all human experience, that of these specula- 
tors themselves included, by the manifest provisions for the 
interposition of intelligence and will in the natural system 
itself. It leaves the myriad evidences of design in nature,, 
divorced from all designing intelligence — which is absurd. 
It gives to matter the attributes of mind, without the nature 
of mind — which is contradictory. It gives to passivity or 
inertia the powers of activity; to blind, unguided force all 
that could be attributed to the highest intelligence and will. 
It introduces intellectual confusion, and unsettles confidence 
in the intuitions of the understanding. It involves absurdities 
at every step, and bristles all over with anomalies unaccounted 
for and unaccountable. It banishes God to a distance, even 
when his existence is allowed — a distance which renders him 
as useless as if he did not exist at all, and, for the most part, 
incontinently deprives him of his being, as well as of his 
functions. It practically weakens, and logically destroys, the 
authority of moral law. It seals up every grave. It destroys 
the gospel. It makes Christ, the sinner's friend, a deceiver — 



The Supernatural and the Natural. 359 

the one spotless human being a liar and a cheat. It leaves 
sin to prey unresisted upon conscience. It overturns the reve- 
lation from God, with all its grand doctrines, its precious 
promises, its prospects of a splendid immortal existence. It 
storms the crystal battlements of heaven, overturns street and 
dome and the palaces of the unfallen dominations. The 
Arcadia of the sainted dead, to which the finger of the Naza- 
rene pointed, vanishes like a dream — dissolves like the pa- 
geant of crimson and golden clouds upon the western arch 
as twilight deepens. It extinguishes the terrors of conscience 
only by extinguishing the consciousness of the sinning soul. 
It annihilates heaven; but it only modifies hell by transfer- 
ring it from the sphere of the supernatural to the blood and 
tear-stained earth, rich with the sepulchres of a most miser- 
able race ; and keeps it burning there at least as long as that 
accursed and orphaned race shall dwell on the accursed planet. 
It leaves the mill to grind on, though it denies the mill-owner 
and taker of the toll. It delivers the individual, by complet- 
ing his destruction; yet abandons the race to indefinite en- 
durance. Moreover, it extends as far as appears the fearful 
law of earthly life over all the universe — for a blind neces- 
sitated development will be likely to determine similar results 
everywhere — now constructive for a time, but with a speedy 
end in view; now destructive utterly in its ultimate results, 
after a career of variegated misery. It leaves all the high 
spiritual elements of the human constitution out of analogy 
with all the rest of its passions and propensities, all of which 
have their adjustments ; and leaves them mere blind anoma- 
lies in the nature of man out of all assignable relations. It 
robs human nature of its dignity as immortal. It robs life 
of its best comforts, as well as of its noblest inspirations. 
It crowns death with the horror of a hopeless and final extinc- 
tion. It blots out forever the Christian vision of endless 



360 The Supeknaturae and the Natural. 

personal glory and blessedness. O life-loving human heart,, 
what an exchange is this for the splendid prospects of the 
Christian gospel and the heaven of the living God! The 
denial of a supernatural of grace and deliverance does not 
destroy the supernatural altogether ; it cannot be destroyed ; 
on any theory of the universe, it stands, and will stand, and 
must stand. The musing sceptical thinker himself is a part 
of the supernatural; he is unchangeably correlated with it; 
he must finally emerge into it in some shape. This cool 
natural man, with all his mental states colored and controlled 
by the impressed influences of this visible and tangible scene 
— this man of trade and politics, of law and railroads, of gas 
and cotton, is simply absorbed by the circumstances and con- 
ditions of a single section of his existence. He must pass 
out of it into another, which is now the supernatural to his 
view, but which is as truly a part of his allotted sphere of 
existence, as the different periods of infancy, manhood 
and old age are allotted developments of his nature here on 
earth. It is as much the necessary dictate of wisdom that he 
should open his eyes to these grand elements of his existence, 
and live with a wise reference to that coming period, which 
is of boundlessly greater dignity and importance than this 
brief span of earthly being, for which such wise and resolute 
provisions are made. Otherwise he will be like the man who 
built his house on the low-lying flat upon a living stream, 
which sank in ruin when the hill-floods sent the waters raging 
over bank and barrier, a devouring torrent. Nothing could 
give more dignity to human life than an infusion of a real 
regard to the supernatural into the processes of human 
thought and habitual human feeling. Man would no longer 
be without God in the world. A perpetual presence would 
infuse purity, dignity and the spirit of pious obedience into 
every mind so alive to its glorious companionship. Faith 



The Supernatural and the Natural. 361 

would give substance to things of hope, and. throw the splendor 
of the coming glory over the sordid and sorrowful present. It 
would purge all the common-place out of human existence, 
and fill it with the powers of the world to come. Man would 
live as seeing him who is invisible, and as a pilgrim seeking 
the city whose builder is God. 

To sum up and briefly recapitulate the whole discussion: 
the broad objection is made that the natural ex vi termini 
excludes the supernatural; and thus by one summary move- 
ment excludes alike all manifestations of the excluded phan- 
tasy, whether constant or occasional miracle, Providence, the 
utility of prayer, except its subjective influences, and all 
acts of worship and moral obedience rendered as positive acts 
of homage to the Great Supreme, are all comprehensively 
set aside. It sweeps away the whole basis of practical 
religion; for even its subjective influences are for a great 
part conditioned on the conception of a personal God, upon 
whom the affections may be lavished, and from whom benefits 
may be obtained. It would be as practicable to develop the 
cultus of art, with the intuitions of form and color paralyzed 
in the intellect, as to develop the sensibilities of religious 
affection towards a deity, either impersonal or banished out 
of all possible communion with man. The most ornamental 
worship of the law of gravitation would exert but a slender 
influence in uplifting the character of a worshipper. 

To meet the objection that the supernatural is excluded 
by the natural, it is only necessary to give some proof that 
the supernatural exists. The proof of the supernatural in 
any form, logically carries with it the possibility of its mani- 
festation in any form. Logically, to exclude the supernatural 
at all, it must be excluded altogether. The argument was 
embodied in these points. 

First, the supernatural was shown to be concurrent with 



362 The Supernatural and the Naturae. 

the natural in an habitual coexistence, by the fact that, on 
any theory from creation to atheism, the natural originates 
in the supernatural, and is the fruit of it. The whole power 
of the argument for a real creation bears conclusively upon 
the demonstration of a concurrent supernatural. If the 
natural is the fruit of the supernatural, it cannot exclude it; 
they must coexist, or else omnipotence destroys itself by its 
OWn exertion. 

Second, the natural is inseparably bound up with the super- 
natural, so that no theory of atheism, deism, pantheism, or 
scientific affirmation of supreme natural law can possibly 
eliminate either or discredit both as coexistent. Death, on 
any theory — emphatically on its true theory — is but the ad- 
vancement of the natural into the supernatural. The natural 
and the supernatural are disclosed by death as the connected 
parts of one common whole — as a connection which is a posi- 
tive conjunction between the two. 

Third, it is still more strikingly illustrated by the positive 
moral correlations, binding the natural to the supernatural. 
The indelible facts of man's moral and intelligent constitution 
correlate him with the supernatural. All his powers are ad- 
justed to the system in which he lives; every passion and 
principle of his nature has its correlated adjustment to which 
it is suited, and by which it may be pleasurably employed. 
The grand energies of his moral and spiritual nature cor- 
relate him with a divine supernatural, and point resistlessly 
through law to a law-giver; through all its yearnings for a 
boundless communion with things suitable to elicit a full 
and ever expanding employment and growth of his capacities 
and his happiness, to the resources of an Infinite Being. If 
there is no such supernatural, the analogy of the human con- 
stitution is rudely violated, man's nature is a lie, and the 
highest principles of his nature — those that raise him highest 



The Supernatural and the Natural. 363 

above the brute and give most of dignity to his being — are 
aimless anomalies, mere blind possibilities without any sphere 
of action, powerful only to curse the heart with desires and 
aspirations which have no space for action, and are .incapable 
of gratification. But this cannot be; the adjustments of 
nature are truly ordered; the nature of the human being 
correlates him with the supernatural, both divine and subor- 
dinate, and thus demonstrates its reality. 

Fourth, the divine supernatural is necessary to guarantee 
continuity of unimpaired force and of orderly action in the 
system of nature. Facts in the historical progress of the 
universe, and the natural incompetence of mere blind force 
to discover or provide for its own waste, alike demand the 
support and guidance of a supreme intelligence and power. 
No other rational basis for the natural system can be con- 
ceived. 

Lastly, the Christian theory of the universe is in accord 
with all the known facts of the case, and meets all the con- 
ditions of the mighty issue. It enthrones God absolutely. 
It brings him near to the sinning and suffering human heart. 
It opens his ears to the cry of the soul in its sorrow. It 
places his open hand in reach of faith. It makes him mighty 
to save even to the uttermost. "The Lord reigneth ; let the 
earth be glad; and let the nations shout for joy; for the 
Lord God omnipotent reigneth." 



oc 



OCT 2 1902 



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